Abstract
Lake Urmia is a hypersaline terminal lake in northwest Iran which has significant changes in basin volume and water level. Shortage of riverine inflow and excess outflow through evaporation lead to drastic water level fall during the past decades. Riverine inflow is sensitive to human intervention and climate change, where outflow through evaporation is more dependent on temperature and water level. During the extreme water level fall, salt deposition spreads on the lake’s bottom and coast. Bottom salt load causes a reduction in basin volume that changes basin physiography in relation to the water level despite the shortage in water inflow. Here we examined the role of salt load on the basin volume and water volume using data of bottom cores representing salt thickness and bathymetry. Our estimates show that during the last decades, a total of 2,790 × 106 m3 of salt has been deposited which equals a 73 cm thick salt layer on average on the lake’s bottom. Therefore, during extreme water level decline, the water volume of Lake Urmia cannot be retrieved by basin volume-water level relation because the salt load has a fundamental role in filling the basin volume.
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Abbreviations
- GIS:
-
Geographical information system
- masl:
-
Meters above sea level
- XRD:
-
X-ray diffraction
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Lahijani, H.A.K., Hamzeh, M.A., Yakushev, E.V., Rostamabadi, A. (2021). Salt Load Impact on Lake Urmia Basin Volume. In: Ghaffari, P., Yakushev, E.V. (eds) Lake Urmia. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 123. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2021_808
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2021_808
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