Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts
The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia, one of the world’s largest saline lakes located in northwestern Iran, is a tragic wake-up call to revisit the principles of water resources management based on the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The overarching goal of this...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2018-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aad246 |
| _version_ | 1827870779916681216 |
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| author | Aneseh Alborzi Ali Mirchi Hamed Moftakhari Iman Mallakpour Sara Alian Ali Nazemi Elmira Hassanzadeh Omid Mazdiyasni Samaneh Ashraf Kaveh Madani Hamid Norouzi Marzi Azarderakhsh Ali Mehran Mojtaba Sadegh Andrea Castelletti Amir AghaKouchak |
| author_facet | Aneseh Alborzi Ali Mirchi Hamed Moftakhari Iman Mallakpour Sara Alian Ali Nazemi Elmira Hassanzadeh Omid Mazdiyasni Samaneh Ashraf Kaveh Madani Hamid Norouzi Marzi Azarderakhsh Ali Mehran Mojtaba Sadegh Andrea Castelletti Amir AghaKouchak |
| author_sort | Aneseh Alborzi |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia, one of the world’s largest saline lakes located in northwestern Iran, is a tragic wake-up call to revisit the principles of water resources management based on the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The overarching goal of this paper is to set a framework for deriving dynamic, climate-informed environmental inflows for drying lakes considering both meteorological/climatic and anthropogenic conditions. We report on the compounding effects of meteorological drought and unsustainable water resource management that contributed to Lake Urmia’s contemporary environmental catastrophe. Using rich datasets of hydrologic attributes, water demands and withdrawals, as well as water management infrastructure (i.e. reservoir capacity and operating policies), we provide a quantitative assessment of the basin’s water resources, demonstrating that Lake Urmia reached a tipping point in the early 2000s. The lake level failed to rebound to its designated ecological threshold (1274 m above sea level) during a relatively normal hydro-period immediately after the drought of record (1998–2002). The collapse was caused by a marked overshoot of the basin’s hydrologic capacity due to growing anthropogenic drought in the face of extreme climatological stressors. We offer a dynamic environmental inflow plan for different climate conditions (dry, wet and near normal), combined with three representative water withdrawal scenarios. Assuming effective implementation of the proposed 40% reduction in the current water withdrawals, the required environmental inflows range from 2900 million cubic meters per year (mcm yr ^−1 ) during dry conditions to 5400 mcm yr ^−1 during wet periods with the average being 4100 mcm yr ^−1 . Finally, for different environmental inflow scenarios, we estimate the expected recovery time for re-establishing the ecological level of Lake Urmia. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:01:51Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a2414b983cbf4328a05f06bc9c831a7b |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:01:51Z |
| publishDate | 2018-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-a2414b983cbf4328a05f06bc9c831a7b2023-08-09T14:36:42ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262018-01-0113808401010.1088/1748-9326/aad246Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughtsAneseh Alborzi0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2233-889XAli Mirchi1Hamed Moftakhari2Iman Mallakpour3https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6869-7615Sara Alian4Ali Nazemi5https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8393-5519Elmira Hassanzadeh6https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9393-5715Omid Mazdiyasni7Samaneh Ashraf8Kaveh Madani9https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0378-3170Hamid Norouzi10Marzi Azarderakhsh11Ali Mehran12Mojtaba Sadegh13https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1775-5445Andrea Castelletti14Amir AghaKouchak15Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of California, Irvine, United States of AmericaDepartment of Civil Engineering and Center for Environmental Resource Management , University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, United States of America; Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering , Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, United States of AmericaDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of California, Irvine, United States of AmericaDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of California, Irvine, United States of AmericaDepartment of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering , Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, United States of America; Department of Geological Sciences , The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, United States of AmericaDepartment of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University , Montréal, Quebec, CanadaDepartment of Civil , Geological and Mining Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Quebec, CanadaDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of California, Irvine, United States of AmericaDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of California, Irvine, United States of AmericaCentre for Environmental Policy , Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Department of Physical Geography , Stockholm University, Stockholm, SwedenNew York City College of Technology , City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, United States of America; Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences , The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, United States of AmericaSchool of Computer Science and Engineering , Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ, United States of AmericaDepartment of Geography , University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States of AmericaDepartment of Civil Engineering , Boise State University, Boise, ID, United States of AmericaDepartment of Electronics , Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, ItalyDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of California, Irvine, United States of America; Department of Earth System Science , University of California, Irvine, United States of America; Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia, one of the world’s largest saline lakes located in northwestern Iran, is a tragic wake-up call to revisit the principles of water resources management based on the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The overarching goal of this paper is to set a framework for deriving dynamic, climate-informed environmental inflows for drying lakes considering both meteorological/climatic and anthropogenic conditions. We report on the compounding effects of meteorological drought and unsustainable water resource management that contributed to Lake Urmia’s contemporary environmental catastrophe. Using rich datasets of hydrologic attributes, water demands and withdrawals, as well as water management infrastructure (i.e. reservoir capacity and operating policies), we provide a quantitative assessment of the basin’s water resources, demonstrating that Lake Urmia reached a tipping point in the early 2000s. The lake level failed to rebound to its designated ecological threshold (1274 m above sea level) during a relatively normal hydro-period immediately after the drought of record (1998–2002). The collapse was caused by a marked overshoot of the basin’s hydrologic capacity due to growing anthropogenic drought in the face of extreme climatological stressors. We offer a dynamic environmental inflow plan for different climate conditions (dry, wet and near normal), combined with three representative water withdrawal scenarios. Assuming effective implementation of the proposed 40% reduction in the current water withdrawals, the required environmental inflows range from 2900 million cubic meters per year (mcm yr ^−1 ) during dry conditions to 5400 mcm yr ^−1 during wet periods with the average being 4100 mcm yr ^−1 . Finally, for different environmental inflow scenarios, we estimate the expected recovery time for re-establishing the ecological level of Lake Urmia.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aad246Lake Urmiaanthropogenic droughtclimate variability and changesustainable water resources managementrestorationenvironmental inflow requirement |
| spellingShingle | Aneseh Alborzi Ali Mirchi Hamed Moftakhari Iman Mallakpour Sara Alian Ali Nazemi Elmira Hassanzadeh Omid Mazdiyasni Samaneh Ashraf Kaveh Madani Hamid Norouzi Marzi Azarderakhsh Ali Mehran Mojtaba Sadegh Andrea Castelletti Amir AghaKouchak Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts Environmental Research Letters Lake Urmia anthropogenic drought climate variability and change sustainable water resources management restoration environmental inflow requirement |
| title | Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts |
| title_full | Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts |
| title_fullStr | Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts |
| title_full_unstemmed | Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts |
| title_short | Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts |
| title_sort | climate informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts |
| topic | Lake Urmia anthropogenic drought climate variability and change sustainable water resources management restoration environmental inflow requirement |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aad246 |
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