Sustainable planning model toward reviving Lake Urmia

Alipour, Habib

doi:10.1080/07900627.2014.949636

Cited by 25 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Due to the socio-ecological importance of the Lake Urmia in the region, a great amount of research has dealt with Lake Urmia shrinkage addressing different aspects of it such as biodiversity, climate, hydrology and water resources, and environmental management (Abatzopoulos et al 2006;Zarghami 2011;Babavalian et al 2014;Alipour and Olya 2015;Hamzekhani et al 2016). Climate change and variability, recognized as drivers of the lake's desiccation, have been the focus of many studies over the past decades.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regionalization of precipitation characteristics in Iran’s Lake Urmia basin

Fazel

Berndtsson

Uvo

et al. 2017

Theor Appl Climatol

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Lake Urmia in northwest Iran, once one of the largest hyper saline lakes in the world, has shrunk by almost 90% in area and 80% in volume during the last four decades. To improve the understanding of regional differences in water availability throughout the region and to refine the existing information on precipitation variability, this study investigated the spatial pattern of precipitation for the Lake Urmia Basin. Daily rainfall time series from 122 precipitation stations with different record lengths were used to extract 15 statistical descriptors comprising 25 th percentile, 75 th percentile, and coefficient of variation for annual and seasonal total precipitation. Principal component analysis in association with cluster analysis identified three main homogeneous precipitation groups in the lake basin. The first sub-region (Group-1) includes stations located in the center and southeast, the second sub-region (Group-2) covers mostly northern and northeastern part of the basin, and the third sub-region (Group-3) covers the western and southern edges of the basin. Results of principal component (PC) and clustering analyses showed that seasonal precipitation variation is the most important feature controlling the spatial pattern of precipitation in the lake basin. The 25 th and 75 th percentiles of winter and autumn are the most important variables controlling the spatial pattern of the first rotated principal component explaining about 32% of the total variance. Summer and spring precipitation variations are the most important variables in the second and third rotated principal components, respectively. Seasonal variation in precipitation amount and seasonality are explained by topography and influenced by the lake and westerly winds that are related to the strength of the North Atlantic Oscillation. Despite using incomplete time series with different lengths, the identified sub-regions are physically meaningful.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regionalization of precipitation characteristics in Iran’s Lake Urmia basin

Fazel

Berndtsson

Uvo

et al. 2017

Theor Appl Climatol

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“…Our case study is illustrative of the large impacts that land use change can have on water resources and how land use patterns would strongly differ if more sustainable land use practices for integrated management of land and water resources were implemented. Land use clearly plays an important role in the sustainability of water resources in a river basin and can have both direct and indirect impacts that are beyond the boundaries of the region (Alipour and Ghasemi Tangal Olya, 2014;Faramarzi et al, 2012). Our study indicates that while rainfed agriculture is likely to have higher water use than rangeland, its water use cannot be compared with that of intensive orchards that need to be irrigated (Alipour and Ghasemi Tangal Olya, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most of the residents of Mordagh Chay river basin are employed in the agricultural sector and the economy is mainly dependent on agricultural products. Unlimited withdrawal of ground and surface water is free to everybody and provides an incentive to the local population to change from more extensive rainfed arable land and rangelands to more intensive irrigated gardens (Alipour and Ghasemi Tangal Olya, 2014). Technological progress helped local people to overcome biophysical limitations and provided access to deep underground water resources.…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, our study region is exemplary of a much larger change process that causes a severe environmental crisis on regional and international scales. The drying of Urmia Lake occurs as a consequence of regional water resource plans such as low irrigation efficiency and intensive agriculture activities, construction of several dams and a crossway and upstream competition in the use of water (Masih et al, 2011;Hassanzadeh et al, 2012;Alipour and Ghasemi Tangal Olya, 2014;Madani, 2014;AghaKouchak et al, 2015;Fazel et al, 2017). The shrinking of the lake shows that the natural ecosystem services in delivering and supplying water resources in the Lake basin are not enough to compensate the continuous increasing water demand.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scenario analysis for integrated water resources management under future land use change in the Urmia Lake region, Iran

et al. 2020

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“…During the same period, the lake lost over 90% of its water volume and reduced down to 1 billion cubic metres (Sheikhi 2018), far below its ecological balance 3 of 14.5 billion cubic metres (ULRP 2015). Accordingly, the water level of the shallow lake is 7 m lower (Agha Kouchak et al 2014;Alipour and Olya 2015;Tourian et al 2015;ULRP 2015;Shadkam et al 2016;IEW 2018). Lately, some reports have argued for a recent recovery (UNEP 2017), but these works have failed to consider short-term climate variability and typically relied on satellite images, which indeed show a substantial growth in LU's surface area compared to its all-time low in 2014 ( Fig.…”

Section: Research Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental degradation at Lake Urmia (Iran): exploring the causes and their impacts on rural livelihoods

2020

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During the last 20 years, Lake Urmia, once recognised as one of the largest hypersaline lakes on the planet, has suffered from severe environmental degradation. As a result of climate change and human activities, the lake has been largely desiccated. Previous work around the unfolding environmental disaster mainly focused on Lake Urmia's water regime, water level fluctuations, crisis causes and possible actions to revive its fortunes. However, there has been little discussion on the prevailing socioeconomic consequences for rural livelihoods affected by the disaster. This paper investigates the impacts of the desiccation on rural households and analyses the occurrence and different forms of local villagers' coping strategies. We present the findings of field research in the region, whereby open and semistructured interviews, with both regional experts from different institutions and local residents, were conducted. Evidence from this study suggests that rural communities near the lake are considerably dependent on the lake basin's ecosystem services, such as water availability, clean air, soil and local climate regulation-all of which are heavily threatened by progressive environmental degradation. In particular, tourism decline and losses in agriculture have already led to emigration to larger cities, presenting challenges for both rural and urban infrastructures. Overall, the vulnerability of rural households to the crisis was found to be high for reasons such as poverty, lack of income alternatives and a lack of institutional mitigation and adaptation policies.

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Sustainable planning model toward reviving Lake Urmia

Cited by 25 publications

References 39 publications

Regionalization of precipitation characteristics in Iran’s Lake Urmia basin

Regionalization of precipitation characteristics in Iran’s Lake Urmia basin

Scenario analysis for integrated water resources management under future land use change in the Urmia Lake region, Iran

Environmental degradation at Lake Urmia (Iran): exploring the causes and their impacts on rural livelihoods

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