Climatic or regionally induced by humans? Tracing hydro-climatic and land-use changes to better understand the Lake Urmia tragedy

Untangling global change impacts on hydrological processes: Resisting climatization

“…• "climate change and extreme weather drive the declines of saline lakes" (Meng, 2019) • "consumptive water use rather than long-term climate change has greatly reduced its size" (Wurtsbaugh et al, 2017) Lake Kinneret • "The loss of available water of about 110 million m 3 yr -1 (about 6.5% of the national water consumption in Israel) is shown to be caused by a decreasing trend in the factor of precipitation enhancement by uplifting on topographic barriers" (Givati & Rosenfeld, 2007) • "Since extraction has been higher than natural and artificial recharge, water reserves in Lake Kinneret and in aquifers were gradually depleted" (Inbar & Bruins, 2004) • "orographic precipitation has been suppressed over Israel" (Givati & Rosenfeld, 2009) • "Climatic factors alone are inadequate to explain the record shrinkage of the Sea of Galilee" • "Climate change expression in the northern Kinneret drainage region is precipitation decline and headwater rivers decline of discharge" (Gophen, 2019) • "the drivers of the Kinneret's shrinkage are primarily anthropogenic" (Wine, 2019c) • "climate change, and the associated reduced rainfall, that is responsible for the Lake Kinneret's reduced inflow" (Tal, 2019b) • "Attribution of Lake Kinneret's shrinkage primarily to human influences is in keeping with conclusions regarding inland water bodies globally" (Wine, 2019b) • "climate change driven depletion of Lake Kinneret" (Tal, 2019a) • "prioritize over-abstraction in pursuit of near term economic goals over sustainable policies that would protect the environment" (Wine, 2019d) Lake Urmia • "precipitation has played an important role in the documented decline of the lake" (Arkian, Nicholson, & Ziaie, 2018) • "agricultural increase of vegetation cover in the watershed correlates well with the lake water level change" (Khazaei et al, 2019) • "streamflow in Urmia Lake basin is more sensitive to changes in temperature than precipitation" (Fathian, Morid, & Kahya, 2014) • "irrigation was by far the main driving force for river flow regime changes in the lake basin" (Fazel et al, 2017) • "streamflow in Urmia Lake basin is more sensitive to changes in temperature than those of precipitation" (Fathian, Dehghan, Bazrkar, & Eslamian, 2016) • "Drastic changes to lake health are primarily consequences of aggressive regional water resources development plans, intensive agricultural activities, anthropogenic changes to the system, and upstream competition over water" (AghaKouchak, Norouzi, et al, 2015) 2018; Wine, Rimmer, & Laronne, 2019;Wurtsbaugh et al, 2017).…”

A Game Theory Warning to Blind Drivers Playing Chicken With Public Goods

“…Efforts are now aimed at damming and restoring the North Aral Sea as wider restoration is deemed too costly (Micklin, ). Comparable situations have taken place in Lake Urmia (AghaKouchak et al, ; Khazaei et al, ), Lake Chad (Gao et al, ), the Dead Sea (Malkawi & Tsur, ), and the San Joaquin River Delta (Madani & Lund, ), where a myopic dash for development has led to environmental degradation and costly restoration which could have been avoided with foresight.…”

In Water‐Limited Landscapes, an Anthropocene Exchange: Trading Lakes for Irrigated Agriculture

“…4 at a multi‐decadal to centurial time scale, seasonal and interannual climate variability are likely to exert a minimal influence on ∆S WS . In the context of shrinking lakes, there is a large body of evidence demonstrating that anthropogenic climate change remains a background condition to and not a primary driver of global lake shrinkage (AghaKouchak et al, 2015; Alborzi et al, 2018; Ashraf et al, 2017; Ashraf et al, 2018; Chaudhari et al, 2018; Fazel et al, 2017; Hassani et al, 2020; Khazaei et al, 2019; Madani et al, 2016; Micklin, 1988; Micklin, 2007; Moore, 2016; Morin et al, 2018; Rodell et al, 2018; Wine, Null, et al, 2019; Wine, Rimmer, & Laronne, 2019; Wine & Davison, 2019; Wurtsbaugh et al, 2017). Though not featured prominently here, those lakes influenced by enhanced glacial melt may present an exception to this generalization.…”

“…The Anthropocene Epoch (Lewis & Maslin, 2015) has witnessed exceptional rates of shrinkage in lakes that rely on inflow from water‐limited watersheds (Zhan et al, 2019). Still, a consequential debate—with crucial water management implications—has transpired between advocates of climatic versus anthropogenic explanations for lake shrinkage (Jaramillo & Destouni, 2015; Khazaei et al, 2019; Madani, 2014; Madani et al, 2016; Wine, Null, et al, 2019; Wine, 2019e; Wurtsbaugh et al, 2017), with important implications for aquatic ecosystems (Grimm et al, 1997) and human water security (Almada et al, 2017).…”