Identification of trends in hydrological and climatic variables in Urmia Lake basin, Iran

Fathian, Farshad; Morid, Saeed; Kahya, Ercan

doi:10.1007/s00704-014-1120-4

Cited by 159 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Precipitation reduction, temperature increase, agricultural development including construction of man-made dams and building a causeway across the lake have been identified as the main reasons for the degradation of Lake Urmia (Abbaspour and Nazaridoust, 2007;Zeinoddini et al, 2009;Delju et al, 2012;Jalili et al, 2012;Sima and Tajrishy, 2013;Fathian et al, 2014;Farajzadeh et al, 2014;Banihabib et al, 2015;AghaKouchak et al, 2015;Azarnivand et al, 2015;Alizadeh-Choobari et al, 15 2016;Ghale et al, 2018). Using Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite observations, altimetry data for Lake Urmia and outputs of the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS), Forootan et al (2014) estimated the trend of groundwater storage changes in the Lake Urmia basin as -11.2 mm/yr between the years of 2005 to 2011, the largest decrease of the six investigated Iranian basins.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the impacts of human water use and climate variations on recent drying of Lake Urmia basin: the value of different sets of spaceborne and in-situ data for calibrating a hydrological model

Hosseini‐Moghari¹,

Araghinejad²,

Tourian³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. During the last decades, the endorheic Lake Urmia basin in northwestern Iran has suffered from decreased precipitation, groundwater levels and a very strong reduction in the volume and more recently also in the extent of Lake Urmia.Human water use has exacerbated the desiccating impact of climatic variations. This study quantifies the contribution of human water use to the reduction of inflow into Lake Urmia, to the loss of lake water volume and to the loss of groundwater and total water storage in the entire Lake Urmia basin during [2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009][2010][2011][2012][2013]. To this end, the WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM) 15 was manually calibrated specifically for the basin against multiple in-situ and spaceborne data, and the best-performing calibration variant was run with or without taking into account water use. Observation data encompass remote-sensing based time series of annual irrigated area in the basin from MODIS, monthly total water storage anomaly (TWSA) from GRACE satellites and monthly lake volume. In-situ observations include time series of annual inflow into the lake and basin averages of groundwater level variations based on 284 wells. In addition, local estimates of sectoral water withdrawals in 2009 and 20 return flow fractions were utilized. Four calibration variants were set up in which the number of considered observation types was increased in a stepwise fashion. The best fit to each and all observations is achieved if the maximum amount of observations is used for calibration. Calibration against GRACE TWSA improves simulated inflow into Lake Urmia but still overestimates it by 90%; it results in an overestimation of lake volume loss, underestimation of groundwater loss and a shifted seasonality of groundwater storage. Lake and groundwater dynamics can only be simulated well if calibration against 25 groundwater levels leads to adjusting the fractions of human water use from groundwater and surface water. According to our study, human water use was the reason for 50% of the total basin water loss of about 10 km 3 during 2003-2013, for 40% of the Lake Urmia water loss of about 8 km 3 and for up to 90% of the groundwater loss. Lake inflow was 40% less than it would have been without human water use. We found that even without human water use, Lake Urmia would not have recovered from the significant loss of lake water volume caused by the drought year 2008. These findings may serve to support water 30 management in the basin and more specifically Lake Urmia restoration plans.Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the impacts of human water use and climate variations on recent drying of Lake Urmia basin: the value of different sets of spaceborne and in-situ data for calibrating a hydrological model

Hosseini‐Moghari¹,

Araghinejad²,

Tourian³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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“…Therefore, it is not surprising that the lake responses quickly to any changes in climate. The historical studies about Urmia lake also highlighted the substantial role of climate change in the lake desiccation (Fathian et al 2014, Hassanzadeh 2010). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have indicated that the lake desiccation is probably caused by a combination of human activities and climate change (AghaKouchak et al 2015, Fathian et al 2014, Hamzekhani et al 2015, Hassanzadeh 2010, Jalili et al 2015. The area of the agricultural lands has more than tripled over the last 40 years supported by a considerable number of reservoirs and a large irrigation network (Iran Ministry of Energy 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The area of the agricultural lands has more than tripled over the last 40 years supported by a considerable number of reservoirs and a large irrigation network (Iran Ministry of Energy 2014). There has also been a significant decrease in precipitation and an increasing trend in average maximum temperature during the same period (Delju et al 2013, Fathian et al 2014. This has caused the most extreme droughts in the basin over the last few decades during the mid-1990s (Tabari et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This has caused the most extreme droughts in the basin over the last few decades during the mid-1990s (Tabari et al 2013). These trends have affected the inflow into the lake (Fathian et al 2014) which has been recognized as the main reason of the lake shrinkage (Hassanzadeh et al 2012). Some studies have estimated how much water is needed to restore (Golabian 2011) and protect the ecology, water quality and quantity of the lake (Abbaspour and Nazaridoust 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preserving the world second largest hypersaline lake under future irrigation and climate change

Shadkam

Ludwig

Vliet

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

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Abstract. Urmia Lake, the world second largest hypersaline lake, has been largely desiccated over the last two decades resulting in socio-environmental consequences similar or even larger than the Aral Sea disaster. To rescue the lake a new water management plan has been proposed, a rapid 40% decline in irrigation water use replacing a former plan which intended to develop reservoirs and irrigation. However, none of these water management plans, which have large socio-economic impacts, have been assessed under future changes in climate and water availability. By adapting a method of environmental flow requirements (EFRs) for hypersaline lakes, we estimated annually 3.7•10 9 m 3 water is needed to preserve Urmia Lake. Then, the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model was forced with bias-corrected climate model outputs for both the lowest (RCP2.6) and highest (RCP8.5) greenhouse-gas concentration scenarios to estimate future water availability and impacts of water management strategies. Results showed a 10% decline in future water availability in the basin under RCP2.6 and 27% under RCP8.5. Our results showed that if future climate change is highly limited (RCP2.6) inflow can be just enough to meet the EFRs by implementing the reduction irrigation plan. However, under more rapid climate change scenario (RCP8.5) reducing irrigation water use will not be enough to save the lake and more drastic measures are needed. Our results showed that future water management plans are not robust under climate change in this region. Therefore, an integrated approach of future land-water use planning and climate change adaptation is therefore needed to improve future water security and to reduce the desiccating of this hypersaline lake.

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Interaction of groundwater with Lake Urmia in Iran

Vaheddoost

Aksoy

2018

Hydrological Processes

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Being a large hyper‐saline water body, Lake Urmia in north‐western Iran deals with a gradual decline in its water level. Most of the studies on Lake Urmia have neglected the groundwater issue. In this study, as a direct approach, the interaction between the groundwater level and the lake water level is investigated both in time and space by analysing the groundwater data compiled from observation wells surrounding the lake. Baseflow separation is considered as an indirect approach to understand the groundwater contribution to the river network flowing into the lake. It is determined that about 70% of run‐off in the rivers draining into the lake is born in the form of baseflow. An interaction between the lake and the groundwater storage is clearly seen from the analysis to conclude that groundwater has a potential to recharge the lake. Thus, the shrinkage of water level in Lake Urmia could be expected to accelerate with the drastic use of groundwater, which will be a disaster with no return.

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Identification of trends in hydrological and climatic variables in Urmia Lake basin, Iran

Cited by 159 publications

References 40 publications

Quantifying the impacts of human water use and climate variations on recent drying of Lake Urmia basin: the value of different sets of spaceborne and in-situ data for calibrating a hydrological model

Quantifying the impacts of human water use and climate variations on recent drying of Lake Urmia basin: the value of different sets of spaceborne and in-situ data for calibrating a hydrological model

Preserving the world second largest hypersaline lake under future irrigation and climate change

Interaction of groundwater with Lake Urmia in Iran

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