Linking Land Use Change and Hydrological Responses

The Role of Agriculture in the Decline of Urmia Lake

authored by: Amirhossein Mirdarsoltany, Alireza B. Dariane, Mahboobeh Ghasemi, Sepehr Farhoodi, Roza Asadi, Akbar Moghaddam
Abstract: The water level and surface area of Urmia Lake, located in the northwest of Iran, has decreased dramatically, presenting significant challenges for hydrological modeling due to complex interactions between surface and groundwater. In this study, the impact of agricultural activities on streamflow within one of the largest sub-basins of Urmia Lake is assessed using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) for hydrological assessments. To have accurate assessments, land use change detections were considered by a novel method, which merges the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) with the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to create a two-band NDVI-DEM image, effectively differentiating between agricultural and rangeland fields. Our findings reveal that agricultural development and irrigation, escalating between 1977 and 2015, resulted in increased annual evapotranspiration (ET) (ranging from 295 mm to 308 mm) and a decrease in yearly streamflow, from 317 million cubic meters to 300 million cubic meters. Overall, our study highlights the significant role that agricultural development and irrigation may play in contributing to the shrinking of Lake Urmia, underscoring the need for improved regional water management strategies to address these challenges, though further analysis across additional basins would be necessary for broader conclusions.
Organisation(s): Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geodetic Science
External Organisation(s): K.N. Toosi University of Technology (KNTU)
Universite de Sherbrooke
Type: Article
Journal: Hydrology
Volume: 11
No. of pages: 14
Publication date: 03.12.2024
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Oceanography, Water Science and Technology, Waste Management and Disposal, Earth-Surface Processes
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 15 - Life on Land
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.3390/hydrology11120209 (Access: Open)