State of the Salton Sea—A science and monitoring meeting of scientists for the Salton Sea

Barnum, Douglas A.; Bradley, Timothy J.; Cohen, Michael; Yanega, Gregor M.

doi:10.3133/ofr20171005

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…4l). Meanwhile, studies 8,33,41 suggest that human activities, such as irrigation and mining, are crucial causes of the surface water decline in Great Salt Lake (–0.20 Gt yr −1 , consistent with −0.17 Gt yr −1 in Wurtsbaugh et al 8 ) and Salton Sea 41 (–0.11 Gt yr −1 ) (Fig. S2), accounting for 12% of the zonal TWS loss.…”

Section: Contributions Of Different Water Storage Componentsmentioning

confidence: 60%

Recent global decline in endorheic basin water storages

et al. 2018

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Section: Contributions Of Different Water Storage Componentsmentioning

confidence: 60%

Recent global decline in endorheic basin water storages

et al. 2018

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“…The disruption of regional water regimes around the globe due to increasing water stress is evident in the growing number of inland water bodies that are facing ecological degradation, especially in irrigated agricultural areas (e.g. Coe and Foley 2001, Micklin 2007, Ma et al 2010, UNEP 2012, Hatchett et al 2015, Barnum et al 2017.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts

Alborzi

Mirchi

Moftakhari

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia, one of the world's largest saline lakes located in northwestern Iran, is a tragic wake-up call to revisit the principles of water resources management based on the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The overarching goal of this paper is to set a framework for deriving dynamic, climate-informed environmental inflows for drying lakes considering both meteorological/climatic and anthropogenic conditions. We report on the compounding effects of meteorological drought and unsustainable water resource management that contributed to Lake Urmia's contemporary environmental catastrophe. Using rich datasets of hydrologic attributes, water demands and withdrawals, as well as water management infrastructure (i.e. reservoir capacity and operating policies), we provide a quantitative assessment of the basin's water resources, demonstrating that Lake Urmia reached a tipping point in the early 2000s. The lake level failed to rebound to its designated ecological threshold (1274 m above sea level) during a relatively normal hydro-period immediately after the drought of record (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002). The collapse was caused by a marked overshoot of the basin's hydrologic capacity due to growing anthropogenic drought in the face of extreme climatological stressors. We offer a dynamic environmental inflow plan for different climate conditions (dry, wet and near normal), combined with three representative water withdrawal scenarios. Assuming effective implementation of the proposed 40% reduction in the current water withdrawals, the required environmental inflows range from 2900 million cubic meters per year (mcm yr −1 ) during dry conditions to 5400 mcm yr −1 during wet periods with the average being 4100 mcm yr −1 . Finally, for different environmental inflow scenarios, we estimate the expected recovery time for re-establishing the ecological level of Lake Urmia.

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“…Since the modern establishment in 1905, agricultural drainage water input has been inadequate to maintain stable salinity levels. Salinity has risen from about 3.6 g/L in 1905 (Hely et al 1966) to values exceeding 50 g/L in recent years (Lorenzi and Schlenk 2014;Barnum et al 2017). As salinity levels have risen, there have been dramatic changes in fish community composition (Hurlbert et al 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%