Urmia Lake (Northwest Iran): a brief review

Eimanifar, Amin; Mohebbi, F.

doi:10.1186/1746-1448-3-5

Cited by 218 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(50 reference statements)

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“…The lake is a shallow and saline lake that is located in the northwest of Iran. Lake Urmia has a total catchment area of approximately 51,876 km 2 that is about 3.2% of the size of Iran, and it represents about 7% of the country's surface water [30]. The maximum surface area of the lake has been estimated to be about 6100 km 2 , but since 1995, it has been constantly declining and reached 2366 km 2 in August of 2011 [32].…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Water Feature Extraction and Change Detection Using Multitemporal Landsat Imagery

et al. 2014

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Lake Urmia is the 20th largest lake and the second largest hyper saline lake (before September 2010) in the world. It is also the largest inland body of salt water in the Middle East. Nevertheless, the lake has been in a critical situation in recent years due to decreasing surface water and increasing salinity. This study modeled the spatiotemporal changes of Lake Urmia in the period 2000-2013 using the multi-temporal Landsat 5-TM, 7-ETM+ and 8-OLI images. In doing so, the applicability of different satellite-derived indexes including Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Modified NDWI (MNDWI), Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI), Water Ratio Index (WRI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Automated Water Extraction Index (AWEI) were investigated for the extraction of surface water from Landsat data. Overall, the NDWI was found superior to other indexes and hence it was used to model the spatiotemporal changes of the lake. In addition, a new approach based on Principal Components of multi-temporal NDWI (NDWI-PCs) was proposed and evaluated for surface water change detection. The results indicate an intense decreasing trend in Lake Urmia surface area in the period 2000-2013, especially between 2010 and 2013 4174 lake lost about one third of its surface area compared to the year 2000. The results illustrate the effectiveness of the NDWI-PCs approach for surface water change detection, especially in detecting the changes between two and three different times, simultaneously.

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Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Water Feature Extraction and Change Detection Using Multitemporal Landsat Imagery

et al. 2014

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“…Urmia Lake, in north-western Iran, is an important internationally recognized natural area designated as a RAMSAR site and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (Eimanifar and Mohebbi 2007). It is a home to many species of reptiles, amphibians and mammals along with a unique brine shrimp species (Asem et al 2012).…”

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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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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“…and Cl -ions demonstrates the thalassohaline characteristic of Urmia Lake. Sodium ions are at slightly higher concentration in the south compared to the north of the lake which results in the shallower depth in the south and a higher evaporation rate [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of Bacterial Biodiversity and Enzyme Production in Three Hypersaline Lakes; Urmia, Howz-Soltan and Aran-Bidgol

et al. 2014

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This research is a comparative study on the diversity of halophilic bacteria with hydrolytic activities in three significant hypersaline lakes; Urmia in the northwest and Howz-Soltan and Aran-Bidgol in the central desert in Iran. Isolated strains from these saline lakes were found to be halotolerant, moderately and extremely halophilic bacteria. The bacteria in each saline lake were able to produce different hydrolytic enzymes including amylase, protease, lipase, DNase, inulinase, xylanase, carboxy methyl cellulase, pectinase and pullulanase. 188, 302, 91 halophilic strains were isolated from Urmia Lake, Howz-Soltan and Aran-Bidgol playa, respectively. The numbers of Grampositive strains were more than Gram-negatives, and among Gram-positive bacteria; spore-forming bacilli were most abundant. Due to the unique physico-chemical conditions of the lake environments, the hydrolytic activities of isolated strains were significantly different. For instance, isolated strains from Howz-Soltan playa did not produce pectinase, DNase, amylase, lipase and inulinase, while the isolates from Aran-Bidgol playa had a great ability to produce pectinase and DNase. The strains from Urmia Lake were also good producers of DNase but failed to show any chitinase activity. The diversity of halophilic bacteria from the mentioned three saline lakes was also determined using PCR-amplified 16S rRNA followed by phylogenetic analysis of the partial 16S rRNA sequences.

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Urmia Lake (Northwest Iran): a brief review

Cited by 218 publications

References 25 publications

Water Feature Extraction and Change Detection Using Multitemporal Landsat Imagery

Water Feature Extraction and Change Detection Using Multitemporal Landsat Imagery

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

Comparison of Bacterial Biodiversity and Enzyme Production in Three Hypersaline Lakes; Urmia, Howz-Soltan and Aran-Bidgol

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