Estimation of shallow groundwater evaporation from dried-up areas of Lake Urmia, Iran

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahand Darehshouri ◽  
Nils Michelsen ◽  
Christoph Schüth ◽  
Stephan Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Water Level ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Shallow Groundwater ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Lake Area ◽  
Lake Urmia ◽  
Night Time ◽  
Undisturbed Soil ◽  
Custom Made ◽  
Water Level Decline

<p>Lake Urmia, located in the northwest of Iran, had an initial volume of about 19 km<sup>3</sup> and a surface area of 5,700 km<sup>2</sup> (Alipour, 2006). Once one of the largest hypersaline lakes in the world, this UNESCO Biosphere Reserve site currently shows a remarkable water level decline. About 70% of the lake area (Tourian et al., 2015) and more than 90% of its volume were lost between 2000 and 2014 (Schulz et al., 2020). The lack of a precise water balance of the Lake Urmia catchment is one of the challenges authorities are facing in their efforts to restore the lake to its ecological level. Here, key issues are that lake evaporation rates are mostly assumed and that evaporation of shallow groundwater from dried-up areas (up to 3,000 km<sup>2</sup>) is often ignored. The objective of this study is to obtain evaporation rate estimates for the dried-up parts of the Urmia lake bed. To this end, we set up a laboratory experiment with undisturbed soil columns collected from dried-up areas of the lake. With the help of a custom-made low-cost environmental chamber, the columns were subject to day- and night-time weather conditions typical for the area. Performed measurements comprise water level logging and monitoring of mass losses from the columns due to evaporation. First experimental results will be presented.</p><p> </p><p><strong>References </strong></p><p>Alipour, S., 2006. Hydrogeochemistry of seasonal variation of Urmia Salt Lake, Iran. Saline Systems 2, 9. doi:10.1186/1746-1448-2-9</p><p>Schulz, S., Darehshouri, S., Hassanzadeh, E., Tajrishy, M., Schüth, C., 2020. Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia. Sci. Rep. 1–10. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-57150-y</p><p>Tourian, M.J., Elmi, O., Chen, Q., Devaraju, B., Roohi, S., Sneeuw, N., 2015. A spaceborne multisensor approach to monitor the desiccation of Lake Urmia in Iran. Remote Sens. Environ. 156, 349–360. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2014.10.006</p><p> </p>

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

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Schulz ◽  
Sahand Darehshouri ◽  
Elmira Hassanzadeh ◽  
Massoud Tajrishy ◽  
Christoph Schüth
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Lake Urmia ◽  
Water Level Decline

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

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Schulz ◽  
Sahand Darehshouri ◽  
Elmira Hassanzadeh ◽  
Christoph Schüth
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Climatic Changes ◽  
Water Withdrawal ◽  
Water Volume ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Agricultural Water ◽  
Lake Urmia ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Water Level Decline

<p>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.</p><p>During this study we gathered an extensive hydro-meteorological data set, information about the reservoirs and the lake bathymetry. This data served for a quantification of the water budget components of Lake Urmia over the last five decades. Interestingly, a comparison of the temporal patterns of the principal natural boundary conditions of streamflow (precipitation and evaporation) with the inflow to the lake revealed that the variability of the inflow can be well explained its natural drivers. With this we can show that variations of Lake Urmia’s water level during the analyzed period were mainly triggered by climatic changes.</p><p>However, under the current climatic conditions agricultural water extraction volumes are significant and often exceed the remaining surface water inflow volumes. This rather simple observation shows that something deeper needs to be dug here. Therefore, we performed a parsimonious hindcast experiment and run a set of development scenarios based on the previously developed water balance. This helped us to better quantify the human impact on the development of the water volume of Lake Urmia. We could show that 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 (Schulz et al., 2020).</p><p> </p><p><strong>References</strong></p><p>Schulz, S., Darehshouri, S., Hassanzadeh, E., Tajrishy, M. and Schüth, C.: Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia, Sci. Rep., 10(1), 236, doi:10.1038/s41598-019-57150-y, 2020.</p>

Water level decline at Iran's Lake Urmia: changing population dynamics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Somayeh Mohammadi hamidi ◽  
Hossein Nazmfar ◽  
Christine Fürst ◽  
Mohammad Hassan Yazdani ◽  
Ahad Rezayan
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Lake Urmia ◽  
Water Level Decline

scholarly journals Change Detection and Prediction of Urmia Lake and its Surrounding Environment During the Past 60 Years Applying Geobased Remote Sensing Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol XLII-3/W4 ◽  
pp. 519-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Valizadeh Kamran ◽  
B. Khorrami
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Urmia Lake ◽  
Lake Area ◽  
Lake Urmia ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aerial Photogrammetry ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Elevation Data

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The gradual depletion of Urmia lake has been a challenge in both national and international scale during recent years. In recent decades the imprudent industrial development accompanied by continuous use of groundwater aquifers has been one of the most pivotal reasons for this crisis. Water level monitoring and detection of its changes within Urmia lake as well as the surrounding environment in the past 60 years integrating GIS, Remote sensing and photogrammetric methods is the main goal for this study. In order to accomplish this, Aerial Photogrammetry images and derived topographic maps from them for the year 1955, Digital Elevation data, quantitative and qualitative information regarding water wells and lake Urmia respectively and finally remotely sensed images of Landsat TM, ETM+ and OLI sensors were used. The temporal range for the study was set to 60 from the year 1955 to 2014. Scrutinizing 12 images relating to different periods, vast changes in both area and perimeter of the lake were detected. Based on the results, the lake area has decreased from 451800 hectares in 1955 to 89730 in recent years due to various causative factors. It is also found that the highest water recession, which caused increasing coastal salty areas, has been occurred in the southern parts of the lake. While the receding water level of the lake has a deep correlation with the increasing agricultural activities around the lake, it has a reverse relation with the lake water EC. These fluctuations can be detrimental to the environment, economy and society. Looking at the changes in lake Urmia, if the current situation keeps on and no drastic measures are taken, turning into a salt land, the Lake would be completely disappeared till 2033.</p>

scholarly journals Why is Lake Urmia Drying up? Prognostic Modeling With Land-Use Data and Artificial Neural Network

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akbar Rahimi ◽  
Jürgen Breuste
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Salt Water ◽  
Water Area ◽  
Transformation Model ◽  
Lake Area ◽  
Lake Urmia ◽  
Water Lake ◽  
Drying Up

Lake Urmia (LU) is considered as the largest salt water lake in Iran and has severe restrictions on water resources and becoming a salt lake increasingly. The LU drought will Couse ecological, health, social and economic problems. Land-use change and the increasing of salt areas evaluated in this work using satellite imagery. We evaluated the present situation and changes of the lake area in the past and further changes until 2025. The results indicated that from 1987 to 2000, the process of change has slowed down and less than 2% of the lake’s water area was reduced, and from 2000 to 2010, these shrinking processes were faster and more than 28% of the lake water area disappeared. The intensity of the shrinking from 2010 to 2014 is very severe. Using the Land Transformation Model, the continuation of the changes was modeled until 2025. The results of the modeling indicate the conversion of the water lake to salt lake in this period, and in the north part, the shallow waters occupy 0.7% of the total lake area. The result shows that climate change was not the significant factors for drying up of the lake but human factors such as building dams to store water for irrigation, increasing groundwater use by established deeper wells for agricultural irrigation were the important factors for drying. With changing of management of the waters leading to the lake and the transfer of new water resources to the lake between 2014 and 2016, the area of the lake increased to a double. It was evident that by proper planning and managing of water resources, the lake’s restoration can be achieved.

scholarly journals Climatization—Negligent Attribution of Great Salt Lake Desiccation: A Comment on Meng (2019)

Climate ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Wine ◽  
Sarah E. Null ◽  
R. Justin DeRose ◽  
Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh
Keyword(s):  
Water Consumption ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Climatic Factors ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Great Salt Lake ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Lake Area ◽  
Extreme Precipitation Events ◽  
Elevation Changes

A recent article reviewed data on Great Salt Lake (Utah) and concluded falsely that climate changes, especially local warming and extreme precipitation events, are primarily responsible for lake elevation changes. Indeed climatically influenced variation of net inflows contribute to huge swings in the elevation of Great Salt Lake (GSL) and other endorheic lakes. Although droughts and wet cycles have caused lake elevation changes of over 4.5 m, they have not caused a significant long-term change in the GSL stage. This recent article also suggests that a 1.4 °C rise in air temperature and concomitant increase in the lake’s evaporative loss is an important reason for the lake’s decline. However, we calculate that a 1.4 °C rise may have caused only a 0.1 m decrease in lake level. However, since 1847, the lake has declined 3.6 m and the lake area has decreased by ≈50%, despite no significant change in precipitation (p = 0.52) and a slight increase, albeit insignificant, in river flows above irrigation diversions (p = 0.085). In contrast, persistent water extraction for agriculture and other uses beginning in 1847 now decrease water flows below diversions by 39%. Estimates of consumptive water use primarily for irrigated agriculture in the GSL watershed suggest that approximately 85% (2500 km2) of the reduced lake area can be attributed to human water consumption. The recent article’s failure to calculate a water budget for the lake that included extensive water withdrawals misled the author to focus instead on climate change as a causal factor for the decline. Stable stream flows in GSL’s headwaters, inadequate temperature increase to explain the extent of its observed desiccation, stable long-term precipitation, and the magnitude of increased water consumption from GSL together demonstrate conclusively that climatic factors are secondary to human alterations to GSL and its watershed. Climatization, in which primarily non-climatic processes are falsely attributed to climatic factors, is a threat to the credibility of hydrological science. Despite a recent suggestion to the contrary, pressure to support Earth’s rising human population—in the form of increasing consumption of water in water-limited regions, primarily to support irrigated agriculture—remains the leading driver of desiccation of inland waters within Earth’s water-limited regions.

Lake and inland dunes as interconnected Systems: The story of Lake Tresssee and an adjacent dune field (Schleswig-Holstein, North Germany)

The Holocene ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 095968362098168
Author(s):  
Christian Stolz ◽  
Magdalena Suchora ◽  
Irena A Pidek ◽  
Alexander Fülling
Keyword(s):  
Water Level ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
High Water ◽  
Alluvial Fan ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Lake Area ◽  
Dune Field ◽  
The North ◽  
Sand Drift

The specific aim of the study was to investigate how four adjacent geomorphological systems – a lake, a dune field, a small alluvial fan and a slope system – responded to the same impacts. Lake Tresssee is a shallow lake in the North of Germany (Schleswig-Holstein). During the Holocene, the lake’s water surface declined drastically, predominately as a consequence of human impact. The adjacent inland dune field shows several traces of former sand drift events. Using 30 new radiocarbon ages and the results of 16 OSL samples, this study aims to create a new timeline tracing the interaction between lake and dunes, as well, as how both the lake and the dunes reacted to environmental changes. The water level of the lake is presumed to have peaked during the period before the Younger Dryas (YD; start at 10.73 ka BC). After the Boreal period (OSL age 8050 ± 690 BC) the level must have undergone fluctuations triggered by climatic events and the first human influences. The last demonstrable high water level was during the Late Bronze Age (1003–844 cal. BC). The first to the 9th century AD saw slightly shrinking water levels, and more significant ones thereafter. In the 19th century, the lake area was artificially reduced to a minimum by the human population. In the dunes, a total of seven different phases of sand drift were demonstrated for the last 13,000 years. It is one of the most precisely dated inland-dune chronologies of Central Europe. The small alluvial fan took shape mainly between the 13th and 17th centuries AD. After 1700 cal. BC (Middle Bronze Age), and again during the sixth and seventh centuries AD, we find enhanced slope activity with the formation of Holocene colluvia.

scholarly journals Investigation of correlation of the variations in land subsidence (detected by continuous GPS measurements) and methodological data in the surrounding areas of Lake Urmia

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 675-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Moghtased-Azar ◽  
A. Mirzaei ◽  
H. R. Nankali ◽  
F. Tavakoli
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Land Subsidence ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Gps Measurements ◽  
Lake Urmia ◽  
North West ◽  
Continuous Gps

Abstract. Lake Urmia, a salt lake in the north-west of Iran, plays a valuable role in the environment, wildlife and economy of Iran and the region, but now faces great challenges for survival. The Lake is in immediate and great danger and is rapidly going to become barren desert. As a result, the increasing demands upon groundwater resources due to expanding metropolitan and agricultural areas are a serious challenge in the surrounding regions of Lake Urmia. The continuous GPS measurements around the lake illustrate significant subsidence rate between 2005 and 2009. The objective of this study was to detect and specify the non-linear correlation of land subsidence and temperature activities in the region from 2005 to 2009. For this purpose, the cross wavelet transform (XWT) was carried out between the two types of time series, namely vertical components of GPS measurements and daily temperature time series. The significant common patterns are illustrated in the high period bands from 180–218 days band (~6–7 months) from September 2007 to February 2009. Consequently, the satellite altimetry data confirmed that the maximum rate of linear trend of water variation in the lake from 2005 to 2009, is associated with time interval from September 2007 to February 2009. This event was detected by XWT as a critical interval to be holding the strong correlation between the land subsidence phenomena and surface temperature. Eventually the analysis can be used for modeling and prediction purposes and probably stave off the damage from subsidence phenomena.

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