China’s inland water dynamics: The significance of water body types
Jingying Zhu, Chunqiao Song, Jida Wang, Linghong Ke
Abstract
The recent paper by Feng et al. (1) analyzes the changes of China’s inland water bodies (WBs) between 1985−1999 and 2000−2015 based on the Global Surface Water Dataset (GSWD) (2). They quantify the area and number of changes of WBs in different hydrological regions of China, and discuss the possible driving factors. Although this study provides a synoptic view of China’s WB dynamics at basin scales, we here convey a caveat that their basin-scale statistics aggregate the changes in various types of WBs, and, consequently, mask divergent changing patterns among the WB types that are critical for attributing causality. An explicit consideration of WB types is essential for understanding large-scale water dynamics. This is especially true for China, a vastly diverse country that descends from the “Roof of the World” to coastal deltas, and is a global hotspot of booming dam construction (3). In such a complex setting, WB types provide … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: cqsong{at}niglas.ac.cn. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1