As an important flood and sediment detention lake of Yangtze River, the development of Dongting Lake was not only affected by the geologic process, but also the human activities, especially the lake's evolution and geomorphology features in the past several centuries.

Partitioned off Yangtze River at north bank by Huarong doming, Dongting Lake Basin is surrounded by the mountains. There are four rivers from the mountains and three channels from the Yangtze River flowing into the lake, and then feed into Yangtze River at Chenglingji in the northeast bank. Now the lake consists of 3 sub-lakes like a large "C" letter along the east and south mountains, the center is plain with farmlands divided by dykes.

The earliest description Dongting Lake was in the documents in Han Dynasty (about 200 A.D.). Because most of the Yangtze River's water and sediments was flooding into north Yunmeng Bog, the basin was dominant by river plain but a little flood lake in the northeastern part. With the population increasing and economics roaring, soil erosion was aggravated because of the exploitation of forests and land of the drainage area, embankments were made along the north bank of Yangtze River, and the riverbed was aggraded year by year. Then the Dongting Lake became the main flooding basin of Yangtze River and enlarged gradually till 1825 A.D. in Qing Dynasty.

Controlled by the north embankment of Yangtze River and as a flooding lake, it was full of water in flooding period and little water in low water season. A great deal of sediments deposited in the lake and the lake bed aggraded gradually and the lake retreated from northwest to southeast. The dikes were built and the land was cultivated on the beaches and bars of the lake. Till the late Qing Dynasty the lake reduce to 30% or so. In the fifties to sixties of 20th century, another large-scale dike-building and land-cultivating and land-lake regularization turned the center of the lake into farmland and the south bank into lake, then made the Dongting Lake's layout like a "C". In the west of the basin, some places aggraded 7~8m during the past 40 years. The dikes building and the farmlands protection made the lake water surface and the depositional area smaller, which resulted in channels and lake's water level higher than the farmland, even 10m in some earlier dike-protected farmland. This forms the special suspend lake landscape in Dongting lake. Even the artificial cutoff and dam construction in Yangtze River cause the sediments deposition decreasing, the aggradation tendency of the lake will last for a long time.