Interaction of groundwater with Lake Urmia in Iran

Vaheddoost, Babak; Aksoy, Hafzullah

doi:10.1002/hyp.13263

Cited by 63 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…For instance, hydrochemical investigations at the western shore indicated almost no direct hydraulic interaction between groundwater and lake water 30 , another study considered a direct component to be less than 3% of total inflow 7 , and some studies provide even quantitative estimates ranging from about 60 × 10 6 m 3 a −1 to 210 × 10 6 m 3 a −1 29,31,32 . The reason for these rather low rates is the fact that the main receiving water bodies for the groundwater are the perennial rivers discharging into the lake 1,7,32,33 . Therefore, a direct groundwater component is neglected in the water balance of the lake, Eq.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia

Schulz

Darehshouri

Hassanzadeh

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

122

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Lake Urmia is one of the largest hypersaline lakes on earth with a unique biodiversity. over the past two decades the lake water level declined dramatically, threatening the functionality of the lake's ecosystems. there is a controversial debate about the reasons for this decline, with either mismanagement of the water resources, or climatic changes assumed to be the main cause. in this study we quantified the water budget components of Lake Urmia and analyzed their temporal evolution and interplay over the last five decades. With this we can show that variations of Lake Urmia's water level during the analyzed period were mainly triggered by climatic changes. However, under the current climatic conditions agricultural water extraction volumes are significant compared to the remaining surface water inflow volumes. Changes in agricultural water withdrawal would have a significant impact on the lake volume and could either stabilize the lake, or lead to its complete collapse. Scientific RepoRtS | (2020) 10:236 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-57150-y www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ for the uncertainty of the presented approach. Being aware of the existence of more accurate concepts, we still consider the applied approach appropriate as it does not require additional and, in our case, not continuously available data such as water temperature and humidity directly above the lake surface.Statistics. The 12-months standardized precipitation evaporation index (SPEI) 34 and the 12-months standardized runoff index (SRI) 35 are calculated individually for all 132 runoff stations 44 . Here, for the SPEI the closest available weather station, based on Thiessen polygons, is used. Subsequently, for each month during the test period from 1965 to 2016, the runoff-weighted averages for the indices are calculated (Fig. 3a). In order to investigate the temporal development of both time series, they are split into the six periods, which characterize the general trends in lake volume evolution (Fig. 2). For each of these periods and for both indices a seasonal Mann-Kendall test is performed and the Sens slope is calculated 45,46 . The significance level for the seasonal Mann-Kendall test is 0.01 and the starting month for the 12-months interval is October (start of the hydrological year). Bootstrap sampling of the slope of the simple linear regression model of the SRI-SPEI relationship for the six periods is performed with a number of 1000 data samples (Fig. 3c).

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia

Schulz

Darehshouri

Hassanzadeh

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

122

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“…In its standard version, WaterGAP is calibrated against observed mean annual river discharge at 1319 stations worldwide by adjusting 1-3 model parameters related to runoff generation and streamflow (Müller Schmied et al, 2014), but due to lack of data not for any station in Lake Urmia basin. A previous WaterGAP version was calibrated, for 22 large basins, against streamflow and total water storage anomalies by adjusting 6-8 parameters (Werth and Güntner, 2010). WGHM can be run globally or for a specific basin.…”

Section: Watergapmentioning

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 global hydrological model

Hosseini‐Moghari

Araghinejad

Tourian

et al. 2020

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. During the last decades, the endorheic Lake Urmia basin in northwestern Iran has suffered from declining groundwater tables and a very strong recent reduction in the volume of Lake Urmia. For the case of Lake Urmia basin, this study explores the value of different locally and globally available observation data for adjusting a global hydrological model such that it can be used for distinguishing the impacts of human water use and climate variations. The WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM) was for the first time calibrated against multiple in situ and spaceborne data to analyze the decreasing lake water volume, lake river inflow, loss of groundwater, and total water storage in the entire basin during 2003–2013. The calibration process was done using an automated approach including a genetic algorithm (GA) and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II). Then the best-performing calibrated models were run with and without considering water use to quantify the impact of human water use. Observations encompass remote-sensing-based time series of annual irrigated areas in the basin from MODIS, monthly total water storage anomaly (TWSA) from GRACE satellites, and monthly lake volume anomalies. 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 return flow fractions were utilized. Calibration against MODIS and GRACE data alone improved simulated inflow into Lake Urmia but inflow and lake volume loss were still overestimated, while groundwater loss was underestimated and seasonality of groundwater storage was shifted as compared to observations. Lake and groundwater dynamics could only be simulated well if calibration against groundwater levels led to an adjustment of the fractions of human water use from groundwater and surface water. Thus, in some basins, globally available satellite-derived observations may not suffice for improving the simulation of human water use. According to WGHM simulations with 18 optimal parameter sets, human water use was the reason for 52 %–57 % of the total basin water loss of about 10 km3 during 2003–2013, for 39 %–43 % of the Lake Urmia water loss of about 8 km3, and for up to 87 %–90 % of the groundwater loss. Lake inflow was 39 %–45 % less than it would have been without human water use. The study shows 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 can support water management in the basin and more specifically Lake Urmia restoration plans.

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“…This has led to increase in the irrigation hence less available runoff as for the lake inflow, and also caused a major increase in evapotranspiration. The following sentence (last sentence of the paragraph) does not explicitly indicate the greater role of human activities in the lake desiccation compared to atmospheric climate change, which is the common finding of the most of the studies in this area [AghaKouchak et al, 2015;Aneseh et al, 2018;Stone, 2015;Torabi Haghighi et al, 2018;Vaheddoost and Aksoy, 2018]. On P 24 L 34 you concluded that "climate change must be constrained to prevent strong decreases of precipitation and runoff".…”

Section: Discussion Of Modelling Results and Equifinalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

On the overlooked uncertainties and subtleties in hydro-climatic modelling of Lake Urmia

Khatami

2018

Preprint

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Interaction of groundwater with Lake Urmia in Iran

Cited by 63 publications

References 36 publications

Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia

Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia

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 global hydrological model

On the overlooked uncertainties and subtleties in hydro-climatic modelling of Lake Urmia

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