Abstract
Lake Balkhash is a large endorheic water body, the third largest by size in Eurasia and the second largest salt lake of the world. With its half-moon elongated morphology and 78% of inflows provided by the Ili River from the West, the lake has a freshwater basin in the West and saline water basin in the East, separated by the 4-km narrow and 6-m deep Uzunaral Strait. The average bathymetry is shallow, with a maximum water depth of 11 m in the West and 26 m in the East. According to investigations of the geological history of the lake in Soviet times and in international projects during the last 15 years, a large lake was formed by the Ili River in the Balkhash region encompassing the present area of the Kapchagai Reservoir during the Middle Pleistocene. The large lake basin was subsequently transformed by a series of tectonic deformations. Around 300 kiloyears before present (ka BP) the Ili River was diverted to the North where it formed a large megalake, the Ancient Balkhash, in the Balkhash-Alakol Depression. Around 110 ka BP, the lake became divided into two basins forming the Alakol Lake in the East and the modern Lake Balkhash in the West. Hydrological conditions mostly controlled by precipitation, evaporation and meltwater discharge caused three different lake-level stages in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene: lake levels between 349 and 355 m above sea level (asl) prevailed during glacial periods, between 341 and 348 m asl during the pluvial early and middle Holocene, and between 335 and 348 m asl during the arid late Holocene when extreme regressions at ca. 5.0, 1.2 and 0.8 ka BP divided the lake into more than one basin. The present lake water balance results from a major regression due to a recent phase of aridization and the filling of the Kapchagai Reservoir in the 1970s and 1980s and the compensation of lower precipitation by increased meltwater discharge from glaciers. However, meltwater runoff will diminish with rapidly shrinking glaciers in the next 50 years. This alarming perspective requires careful water-basin management which was not yet implemented. Lake Balkhash is exposed to the threat of exaggerated anthropogenic water subtraction due to an accelerated infrastructural and demographic boost that doubled the irrigated farmlands in the Chinese part of the catchment in less than 20 years. Due to the lake’s hydrology, catchment rock and hydrochemical conditions, the water of the Eastern Balkhash has high concentrations of potassium and magnesium, unfavorable for hydrobionts. Any further increase in salinity will soon cause a considerable diminution of the lake’s biomass. The ichthyofauna of the lake has been intensively manipulated during the twentieth century, with the introduction of new species and the decline of the original ones. The substitution of the native fish fauna by introduced species caused a decrease of valuable commercial fish in the lake and a decrease of the total fish catch. Thus, Lake Balkhash faces serious environmental risks today and its near future depends on the collective will and decisions of the responsible agencies.
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Notes
- 1.
During the pluvial years 1958–1961 the total annual river inflow in the lake rose to 23.88 km3, which with evaporation levels of 17.63 km3, supported a sensible increase of water level to 343 m asl (Shnitnikov 1973, 134).
- 2.
The high salinity levels of Lake Balkhash reconstructed for the period from 2.4 to 2.2 ka BP in spite of the cold and moist climate phase between 2.5 and 2.0 ka are attributed by Feng et al. (2013) to reduced runoff from glacial meltwater. Similarly, the water-level rise (+8.1 cm per year) during the period 1992–2010 under increasing temperature (+0.08 °C per year) and precipitation (+11.6 mm per year) is largely attributed to the increasing contribution of glacial meltwater by Propastin (2012).
- 3.
The modern Balkhash is divided in five basins: West-South, West-North, Middle, Lepsinsky and Burly-Tyubin, with depth increasing from West to East, i.e., lake bottom at 334, 333, 327, 326 and 316 m asl, respectively (corresponding to water depths of 10, 11, 15, 16 and 26 m today).
- 4.
The first important studies of the geological history of the modern Balkhash, although focused on geological characters with scanty information about hydrological phases, had been published by Berg (1904), by Rusakov (1933), and Kostenko (1946), constituting for decennia the main references on the lake. Besides the fundamental studies of Sapozhnikov (1951), other important contributions have been those of Kurdyukov (1958) and Tarasov (1961). Dzhurkashev (1964, 1972) started to consider water-level fluctuations and found evidence for a short-term isolation of the Eastern Balkhash in the early eighteenth century, which decreased its water level by 6–7 m. Only later on, under the stimuli of the Balkhash regression provoked by the realization of the Kapchagai Reservoir, Venus (1985) studied buried peat bogs and inferred regression events, and N. N. Verzilin provided the first qualitative reconstruction of the Holocene lake-level fluctuations on the basis of mineralogical, hydrochemical and biotic analyses of sediment cores (Sevastyanov 1991; Tursunov 2002; Dostay 2009). Y. P. Khrustalev and Y. G. Chernousov published an article in 1992 reproducing their historical reconstruction of the lake already included in Sevastyanov (1991) which constitutes today the main (and unfortunately partly confusing) reference concerning the Holocene lake history (see also note 8).
- 5.
The “Ili Project” was based on the cooperation between the “Research Institute for Humanity and Nature” (RIHN) of Kyoto and three organizations based in Almaty: the “Institute of Geological Sciences named after KI Satpaev”, the “Kazakh State Research Institute of the Cultural Heritage of the Nomads” and the “Laboratory of Geoarchaeology”. The researches of the Ili Project focused on the Ili-Balkhash basin (Semirechie) and included several fields: the reconstruction of palaeoclimate-environmental changes, historical fluctuations of Balkhash’s lake levels and of ice deposits, archaeological traces of land and water use, Late Medieval historical accounts concerning the territory, and Soviet documents and post-Soviet interviews about the pastoralist and agricultural activities in the basin.
- 6.
The investigation of lake sediments was initiated in 2007 by two international teams working in cooperation with the Satpaev Institute of Geological Sciences of Kazakhstan (B. Aubekerov): a Chinese team led by Zhaodong Feng and Chengjun Zhang, and a Japanese team of the RHIN Institute led by Jumpei Kubota. That year, both teams drilled sediment cores at short distance from each other in the lake near the Tasaral Island in the western basin of Lake Balkhash. The preliminary analyses of the ‘Japanese’ core BAL07 were published in 2010 (Endo et al. 2010) and more detailed results based on fossil diatom assemblages were issued in 2016 (Chiba et al. 2016). The pollen-based study of the ‘Chinese’ core BK-A was published with incorrect location of the coring site by Feng et al. (2013) and an additional study of the ostracod record of the same core by Mischke et al. (2020). In 2009, the Japanese team drilled two additional cores (0901 and 0902) in the easternmost part of Lake Balkhash, and preliminary analyses of the cores were published by Endo et al. (2012; Sect. 5.2.2).
- 7.
The average sediment thickness in the area of the modern Western Balkhash is 70 m, parted as 44 m of Neogene and 26 m of Quaternary deposits, the latter with distinct 2–3 horizons (the second horizon uneven and eroded). Total sediments’ thickness decreases from 70 m in Western Balkhash to 50 m in Eastern Balkhash on the account of the lesser river and sediment input of the eastern basin (Sevastyanov 1991).
- 8.
The reconstruction of the history of the lake provided by Khrustalev and Chernousov (1992) is relatively different and confusing. Using a chronological framework established by Maksimov (1961) for the glacial stages of the Dzungarian Alatau, the authors attribute the appearance of an Ancient Balkhash (“Balkhash-Alakol”) basin outrivaling the Aral Sea in size, even if not reached yet by the Ili River inflow to the post-glacial early Holocene period. The disappearance of the Ili Lake by Ili River diversion is assigned to the end of the Atlantic period (5.6 ka BP) and is quoted as responsible for the formation of the “Balkhash”, so that, in the view of the authors, the entire formation and rotation of the Ili deltas occurred during the last 5 ka.
Then, ignoring geological reports and only referring to lithological and chemical data from core samples provided by N. N. Verzilin’s fieldwork in 1979–1981, Khrustalev and Chernousov reconstructed the succession of four stages of the lake during the Holocene, each stage starting with a transgression (T) and ending with a regression (R). These fluctuations are named by four specific toponyms and approximate chronological boundaries (all in ka BP) were provided: (I)-Ancient Balkhash (T 10.3, R 8.3–5.6), (II)-Balkhash (T 5.6, R 4.4–3.5), (III)-New Balkhash (T 3.5, R 2.6–1.9), (IV)-Modern Balkhash (T 1.9, R intermittent). The present authors infer that three of these regressive events reduced the Eastern Balkhash into a series of “isolated or semi-isolated pools”: between 8.3 and 5.6, at 3.8 and 0.75 ka BP (quoted from Venus 1985).
The described middle-late Holocene history of the modern Balkhash, by being the most recent and best furnished in terms of radiometric ages, has been diffused and adopted as reference by many scientists (e.g., Tursunov 2002; Solomina and Alverson 2004; Krylov et al. 2014; etc.) against the reliable geochronology of the basin established by geologists before.
- 9.
Especially aeolian processes promote the relatively low salinity of the lake’s water: “The stock of salt reserves in the lake’s area amounts to only 260–300 million tons, which is not large since, in addition to their consumption in the process of carbonate formation, some of them are lost by entering the numerous bays of the winding coastline. During phases of water level recession, the bays separate from the lake, dry out, and their salt deposits are blown by the wind, thus reducing the salt’s reserve of the lake” (Sevastyanov 1991).
- 10.
Taking into account sedimentation rates, such pond could have been 4–5 m deep.
- 11.
Using diatom assemblages correlated with Ca content in ostracods radiometrically dated, the Japanese team placed the two low-level stands in a series of seven regressive periods: 0–300, 330–360, 750–790, 1060–1260, 1560–1600, 1780–1840, 1950–1990 AD (Chiba et al. 2016). The pollen-based reconstruction by Feng and co-authors confines itself to the outline of three climatic stages in the basin: cool-wet (500 BC–200 AD), moderately warm-dry (200–1350 AD) and cool-wet for the past 650 years with a last warm-dry century (Feng et al. 2013).
- 12.
A water volume of 6.6 km3 in the Kapchagai Reservoir corresponds to a water surface of 1250 km2 (7.1% of Lake Balkhash’s surface) and an annual evaporation of 1.2 km3.
- 13.
Chinese authorities do not provide information about their hydraulic plans in the region and, up to now, did not respond to repeated requests for the establishment of an international consortium for the management of the trans-boundary hydrological system of the Ili-Balkhash Basin.
- 14.
A solution is the homogeneous mixture of a solute and a liquid where, in contrast to a suspension, the solute cannot be separated from the solvent by filtration.
- 15.
1 mg/L is equivalent to 1 ppm (parts per million).
- 16.
The ionic composition of Lake Balkhash’s water is relatively distinct if waters of different basins are compared: “The proportion of chloride (9–21 equiv. percent) is 2–3 times lower than the proportion of chloride in the sea. However, the proportions of potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphate and carbonate/bicarbonate ions are significantly higher. In Eastern Balkhash, the proportion of potassium ions (2.9 equiv. percent) is very high in comparison to other waters (e.g., 0.6 equiv. percent in the ocean and the Aral Sea). The lower proportion of calcium ions, especially in comparison with the Aral and Caspian seas, is also notable” (Aladin and Plotnikov 1993, 5).
- 17.
The amount of salts in the waters of the endorheic lake would be significantly higher given the sedimentary inputs if geological processes would not partly remove salts (Sect. 5.2.1 and Footnote 9).
- 18.
The amount of ions is directly correlated with the electrical conductivity (EC) of the water, which is also a good indicator of salinity (TDS = EC x 0.64), moreover by the fact that it keeps in consideration temperature gradients. EC is expressed in Siemens/metre (S/m or mho/m), conventionally calibrated at 25 °C, with 1 S/m equivalent to a salinity of 5 g/L. Going from West to East in Lake Balkhash, EC values at T = 1.1 °C increase from 1 S/m to more than 15 S/m. EC values increase 3% per 1 °C temperature increase and at a maximum water temperature of 26 °C reach up to 2 S/m in the westernmost and up to 27 S/m in the easternmost part of the lake.
- 19.
- 20.
The Ili marinka, Balkhash perch and spotted stone loach are endemics of Balkhash-Alakol Basin.
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Acknowledgements
The study of Lake Balkhash in the frame of the “Ili Project” (2007–2012) was funded by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (Kyoto), Japan. The work of NVA and ISP was supported by the theme of the State assignment for 2019–2021 “AAAA-A19-119020690091-0: Studies of biological diversity and the mechanisms of the impact of anthropogenic and natural factors on the structural and functional organization of ecosystems of continental water bodies. Systematization of the biodiversity of salt lakes and brackish-water inland seas in the zone of critical salinity, study of the role of brackish-water species in ecosystems”.
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Sala, R., Deom, JM., Aladin, N.V., Plotnikov, I.S., Nurtazin, S. (2020). Geological History and Present Conditions of Lake Balkhash. In: Mischke, S. (eds) Large Asian Lakes in a Changing World. Springer Water. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42254-7_5
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