Are There Differences in the Response of Lake Areas at Different Altitudes in Xinjiang to Climate Change?

Lakes account for approximately 87% of the Earth’s surface water resources and serve as sensitive indicators of climate and environmental change. Understanding how lake areas respond to climate change across different elevation gradients is crucial for guiding sustainable water resource management in Xinjiang. We utilized Landsat series remote sensing imagery (1990–2023) on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to extract the temporal dynamics of natural lakes larger than 10 km² in Xinjiang, China (excluding reservoirs). We analyzed the relationships between lake area dynamics, climatic factors, and human activities to assess the sensitivity of lakes at different altitudinal zones to environmental change. The results showed that (1) the total area of Xinjiang lakes increased by 1188.36 km² over the past 34 years, with an average annual area of 5998.54 km²; (2) plain lakes experienced fluctuations, reaching their maximum in 2000 and their minimum in 2015, alpine lakes peaked in 2016, and plateau lakes continued to expand, with the maximum recorded in 2020 and the minimum in 1995; and (3) human activities such as urban and agricultural water use were the primary causes of shrinking plain lakes, while an increased PET accelerates evaporation, alpine lakes were influenced by both climate variability and human disturbance, and plateau lakes were highly sensitive to climate change, with rising temperatures increasing snowmelt and glacial runoff into lakes, which were the main drivers of their expansion. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating elevation-specific lake responses into climate adaptation strategies and sustainable water management policies in arid regions.