Determination of environmental water requirements of Lake Urmia, Iran: an ecological approach

Abbaspour, M.; Nazaridoust, A.

doi:10.1080/00207230701238416

Cited by 103 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…By selecting a hydrological approach and classifying flow regimes, we were able to increase the protection for low-flow months by allocating more flow. We estimated the annual EFRs to be about 3.7•10 9 m 3 which is higher than a previous study by Abbaspour and Nazaridoust (2007) who estimated ecological EFRs to be 3.08•10 9 m 3 . Their EFR estimation was based on calculating inflow applying the difference between the lake evaporation and precipitation (E-P) on their estimated ecological lake surface (4.6•10 9 m 2 ).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 76%

“…These trends have affected the inflow into the lake (Fathian et al 2014) which has been recognized as the main reason of the lake shrinkage (Hassanzadeh et al 2012). Some studies have estimated how much water is needed to restore (Golabian 2011) and protect the ecology, water quality and quantity of the lake (Abbaspour and Nazaridoust 2007). However, they have not included the important role of climate change which is likely to reduce the precipitation and run-off in both near-term (Kirtman 2013) and long-term future (Collins 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preserving the world second largest hypersaline lake under future irrigation and climate change

Shadkam

Ludwig

Vliet

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

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Abstract. Urmia Lake, the world second largest hypersaline lake, has been largely desiccated over the last two decades resulting in socio-environmental consequences similar or even larger than the Aral Sea disaster. To rescue the lake a new water management plan has been proposed, a rapid 40% decline in irrigation water use replacing a former plan which intended to develop reservoirs and irrigation. However, none of these water management plans, which have large socio-economic impacts, have been assessed under future changes in climate and water availability. By adapting a method of environmental flow requirements (EFRs) for hypersaline lakes, we estimated annually 3.7•10 9 m 3 water is needed to preserve Urmia Lake. Then, the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model was forced with bias-corrected climate model outputs for both the lowest (RCP2.6) and highest (RCP8.5) greenhouse-gas concentration scenarios to estimate future water availability and impacts of water management strategies. Results showed a 10% decline in future water availability in the basin under RCP2.6 and 27% under RCP8.5. Our results showed that if future climate change is highly limited (RCP2.6) inflow can be just enough to meet the EFRs by implementing the reduction irrigation plan. However, under more rapid climate change scenario (RCP8.5) reducing irrigation water use will not be enough to save the lake and more drastic measures are needed. Our results showed that future water management plans are not robust under climate change in this region. Therefore, an integrated approach of future land-water use planning and climate change adaptation is therefore needed to improve future water security and to reduce the desiccating of this hypersaline lake.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 76%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preserving the world second largest hypersaline lake under future irrigation and climate change

Shadkam

Ludwig

Vliet

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

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“…It is a terminal lake that 20 loses water only by evaporation (Hassanzadeh et al, 2011). Abbaspour and Nazaridoust (2007) estimated that inflows of at least 3·10 9 m 3 /yr are needed to compensate for lake evaporation. Inflow from groundwater to the lake was estimated to be less than 3% of total inflow from precipitation, rivers and groundwater (Hasemi, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the impacts of human water use and climate variations on recent drying of Lake Urmia basin: the value of different sets of spaceborne and in-situ data for calibrating a hydrological model

Hosseini‐Moghari¹,

Araghinejad²,

Tourian³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. During the last decades, the endorheic Lake Urmia basin in northwestern Iran has suffered from decreased precipitation, groundwater levels and a very strong reduction in the volume and more recently also in the extent of Lake Urmia.Human water use has exacerbated the desiccating impact of climatic variations. This study quantifies the contribution of human water use to the reduction of inflow into Lake Urmia, to the loss of lake water volume and to the loss of groundwater and total water storage in the entire Lake Urmia basin during [2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009][2010][2011][2012][2013]. To this end, the WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM) 15 was manually calibrated specifically for the basin against multiple in-situ and spaceborne data, and the best-performing calibration variant was run with or without taking into account water use. Observation data encompass remote-sensing based time series of annual irrigated area in the basin from MODIS, monthly total water storage anomaly (TWSA) from GRACE satellites and monthly lake volume. In-situ observations include time series of annual inflow into the lake and basin averages of groundwater level variations based on 284 wells. In addition, local estimates of sectoral water withdrawals in 2009 and 20 return flow fractions were utilized. Four calibration variants were set up in which the number of considered observation types was increased in a stepwise fashion. The best fit to each and all observations is achieved if the maximum amount of observations is used for calibration. Calibration against GRACE TWSA improves simulated inflow into Lake Urmia but still overestimates it by 90%; it results in an overestimation of lake volume loss, underestimation of groundwater loss and a shifted seasonality of groundwater storage. Lake and groundwater dynamics can only be simulated well if calibration against 25 groundwater levels leads to adjusting the fractions of human water use from groundwater and surface water. According to our study, human water use was the reason for 50% of the total basin water loss of about 10 km 3 during 2003-2013, for 40% of the Lake Urmia water loss of about 8 km 3 and for up to 90% of the groundwater loss. Lake inflow was 40% less than it would have been without human water use. We found that even without human water use, Lake Urmia would not have recovered from the significant loss of lake water volume caused by the drought year 2008. These findings may serve to support water 30 management in the basin and more specifically Lake Urmia restoration plans.Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi

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“…To compare the results of the different lakes and wetlands, the MELL was normalized with Equation (12).…”

Section: Calculation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The lake morphology analysis methods define MELL as the inflection point of a specified lake morphology curve [8,10], however these methods face the problems of selecting an appropriate lake morphology curve and the possible non-existence of the inflection point in this selected curve. Both the habitat analysis methods and the species-environment models consider more of the interactions between the environment and the lake ecosystem [11,12], however they require detailed in situ surveys that are time-consuming and costly, which restricts their wide use in practice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simplified Lake Surface Area Method for the Minimum Ecological Water Level of Lakes and Wetlands

Shang

2018

Water

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Abstract:The determination of the rational minimum ecological water level is the base for the protection of ecosystems in shrinking lakes and wetlands. Based on the lake surface area method, a simplified lake surface area method was proposed to define the minimum ecological lake level from the lake level-logarithm of the surface area curve. The curve slope at the minimum ecological lake level is the ratio of the maximum lake storage to the maximum surface area. For most practical cases when the curve cannot be expressed as a simple analytical function, the minimum ecological lake level can be determined numerically using the weighted sum method for an equivalent multi-objective optimization model that balances ecosystem protection and water use. This method requires fewer data of lake morphology and is simple to compute. Therefore, it is more convenient to use this method in the assessment of the ecological lake level. The proposed method was used to determine the minimum ecological water level for one freshwater lake, one saltwater lake, and one wetland in China. The results can be used in the lake ecosystem protection planning and the rational use of water resources in the lake or wetland basins.

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Determination of environmental water requirements of Lake Urmia, Iran: an ecological approach

Cited by 103 publications

References 3 publications

Preserving the world second largest hypersaline lake under future irrigation and climate change

Preserving the world second largest hypersaline lake under future irrigation and climate change

Quantifying the impacts of human water use and climate variations on recent drying of Lake Urmia basin: the value of different sets of spaceborne and in-situ data for calibrating a hydrological model

Simplified Lake Surface Area Method for the Minimum Ecological Water Level of Lakes and Wetlands

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