REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, WASHINGTON -- Lakes on the Mongolian Plateau, composed mainly of Inner Mongolia in China and the Republic of Mongolia, have been experiencing remarkable shrinkage over the past three decades due to intensive human activities and climate changes, a study by Chinese researchers suggested Monday.

Lakes are widely distributed on the 2.75-million-sq-km Mongolian Plateau and are critical to sustain the 28 million people on the region, according to the study published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, researchers from Peking University and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) established a database of lakes for the entire plateau using images of the U.S. Landsat satellites from the 1970s to 2000s, combined with ground-based censuses to explore the lake changes and the associated driving factors.

The researchers found the number of lakes has declined rapidly between the 1980s and 2010, with a greater decline in China's Inner Mongolia than in Mongolia.