Abstract
In recent decades, the amount of water in Urmia Lake has faced a considerable decrease. Several studies evaluated agricultural development as one of the main governing factors. The current study investigates the effect of agricultural development on the amount of streamflow in one of the main Urmia Lake sub-basins. To focus on agricultural development, a novel method using DEM and NDVI information was utilized to distinguish the agriculture class for selected years. Outputs of SWAT model for different years and scenarios revealed that agricultural development from the year 1977 to 2015, increased the annual evapotranspiration from 295 to 308 mm, and decreased the annual streamflow from 317 mcm to 300 mcm for the irrigation scenario. In addition, the groundwater level fluctuations captured by the SWAT, showed 1.9 meters drawdown in the Sarab plain from the year 1992 to 2003, which was in accordance with the observed trend during this period.
Assessment of agricultural development preventive policies for restoration of Urmia Lake in Barandoz Basin, Iran
