The impact of river regulation in the Tigris and Euphrates on the Arvandroud Estuary

Abstract

The Arvandroud river (also known as Shatt-al-Arab) and its estuary have been degraded due to the changing river flow regime in the Tigris and Euphrates. This study assessed changes in flow from the major rivers and the impacts on the estuary. To assess the river flow changes, three major flow regime attributes were computed: timing (TIF), magnitude (MIF), and variability (VIF). By combining these indices, the total flow regime impact factor (IF) was scaled between 0 and 1, and classified into five groups: Low (0.80<IF<1.0), Incipient (0.60<IF<0.80), Moderate (0.40<IF<0.60), Severe (0.2<IF<0.40), and Drastic (0.0<IF<0.20). Flow regime impact maps were then created for 1941–1955, 1960–1970, 1975–1984, and 1990–2000. These revealed that, over time, the impact has extended along the basin from downstream to upstream, with a significant flow regime change from 1941–1955 to 1990–2000 in the Tigris, Euphrates, and Arvandroud. Analysis of remote sensing data revealed that the change in the flow regime has led to land degradation in the Arvandroud estuary during the past 46 years (1972–2018). In addition, the impact of the Iran–Iraq war (based on degradation of vegetation cover between 1985 and 1988) is 5.1 times of mean rate of change during 1972–2018. This study thus contributes new information on estuaries and the impact of upstream land and water use change.

Effect of land use on microplastic pollution in a major boundary waterway: The Arvand River

“…The Arvand River, also known as Shatt al-Arab in Arabic, is flowing North East the Persian Gulf, it constitutes part of the southern border between Iraq and Iran. The river watershed is situated within the Mesopotamian plain (Haghighi et al, 2020) which is covered mainly by Quaternary deposits including Holocene and Pleistocene alluvial sediments (Sissakian et al, 2017) over 100 m thick. Arvand is a wide navigable river that flows through three major cities including Basra (1,381,731inhabitants) in Iraq, and Abadan (231,476 inhabitants) and Khorramshahr (133,097 inhabitants) in Iran (Hosseini et al, 2013).…”

“…The tide in the Arvand River is classified as semi-diurnal, with an average rise of 2.6 m at the mouth of the river near the Persian Gulf (Haghighi et al, 2020). In recent years, this river has experienced an increase in salinity which the total dissolved solids (TDS) value of the water exceeded 15,000 ppm, due to substantial dropping of incoming freshwater from its major feeding rivers (Hamdan, 2016).…”

Monitoring war‐generated environmental security using remote sensing: A review

“…Similar to this study, and over the same area, a water quality analysis has been made (Hasab, Jawad, et al, 2020) and again correlated to the war activates degrading the Iraqi marshes. In the Iran-Iraq area, land-cover changes have related to war impact as in the war period (1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988), the decrease in the vegetation has been noticed to be five times higher than the mean values (Haghighi et al, 2020). Land use and land cover (LULC) change detection analyses were done in a sub-area in Lebanon in the period 1985-2015 (Choy et al, 2020).…”

Probabilistic El Niño effect on flood damages assessment

“…Among all the natural disasters, flood with $36.8 billion accounts for the most economic losses in the world (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), 2020). The flood consequences may be doubled due to many natural and anthropogenic phenomena; for example, climate change (Torabi Haghighi et al, 2020) and large-scale atmospheric signals (Wei et al, 2014). El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most emblematic teleconnection signal that causes climate anomalies in many parts of the world (Diaz and Markgraf, 1992;Ward et al, 2014;Yeh et al, 2018).…”