Abstract
Saline lakes have diminished considerably due to large-scale irrigation projects throughout the world. Environmental flow (EF) release from upstream reservoirs could help conserve and restore these lakes. However, experiences from regions lacking environmental legislation or with insufficient water resources management show that, despite EF allocation, farmers tend to use all available water for agriculture. In this study, we employed a new method for designing environmental flow release strategies to restore desiccated terminal lakes in arid and semi-arid regions with intensive cultivation within the catchment. The novelty of the method is that it takes into account farmers’ water use behavior and the natural flow regime in upstream systems to design an optimum monthly EF release strategy for reservoirs. We applied the method to the water resource system of Lake Urmia, once the largest saline lake in the Middle East and now one of the most endangered saline lakes in the world. The analysis showed that the EF released is exploited by lowland farmers before reaching Lake Urmia and that inflow to the lake from some rivers has decreased by up to 80%. We propose a new EF release strategy that requires a considerable change in practice whereby water is released in the shortest possible time (according to reservoir outlet capacity) during the period of lowest irrigation demand in winter. Restoring the lake to minimum ecological level would require 2.4–3.4 km3 EF allocation by different methods of release based on the recent condition (2002–2011) of the lake.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abbaspour M, Nazaridoust A (2007) Determination of environmental water requirements of Lake Urmia, Iran: An ecological approach. Int J Environ Stud 64:161–169
Abbaspour M, Javid AH, Mirbagheri SA, Givi FA, Moghimi P (2012) Investigation of lake drying attributed to climate change. Int J Environ Sci Technol 9:257–266
Fathian F, Morid S, Kahya E (2014) Identification of trends in hydrological and climatic variables in Urmia Lake basin, Iran. Theor Appl Climatol 119:443–464
Fazel N, Berndtsson R, Uvo CB, Madani K, Kløve B (2017a) Regionalization of precipitation characteristics in Iran’s Lake Urmia basin. Theor Appl Climatol:1–11
Fazel N, Torabi Haghighi A, Kløve B (2017b) Analysis of land use and climate change impacts by comparing river flow records for headwaters and lowland reaches. Glob Planet Chang 158:47–56
Hassanzadeh E, Zarghami M, Hassanzadeh Y (2012) Determining the main factors in declining the Urmia Lake level by using system dynamics modeling. Water Resour Manag 26:129–145
Kakahaji H, Banadaki HD, Kakahaji A, Kakahaji A (2013) Prediction of Urmia Lake water-level fluctuations by using analytical, linear statistic and intelligent methods. Water Resour Manag 27:4469–4492
Karbassi A, Bidhendi GN, Pejman A, Bidhendi ME (2010) Environmental impacts of desalination on the ecology of Lake Urmia. J Great Lakes Res 36:419–424
Kohler MA, Nordenson TJ, Fox WE (1955) Evaporation from pans and lakes. Research paper/U.S. Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau, Washington, DC, pp 1–16
Lytle DA, Poff NL (2004) Adaptation to natural flow regimes. Trends Ecol Evol 19:94–100
Madani K (2014) Water management in Iran: what is causing the looming crisis? J Environ Stud Sci 4:315–328
Menberu MW, Torabi Haghighi A, Ronkanen A, Kværner J, Kløve B (2014) Runoff curve numbers for peat-dominated watersheds. J Hydrol Eng 040:4058-1-04014058-10
Nouri H, Mason RJ, Moradi N (2017) Land suitability evaluation for changing spatial organization in Urmia County towards conservation of Urmia Lake. Appl Geogr 81:1–12
OWWMP (2011a) Iran’s comprehensive water resources plan. Agricultural water use (Lake Urmia Watershed) report. Iran Ministry of Energy’s Office for Water and Wastewater Macro-Planning
OWWMP (2011b) Iran’s comprehensive water resources plan. Meteorological report. Iran Ministry of Energy’s Office for Water and Wastewater Macro-Planning
OWWMP (2011c) Iran’s comprehensive water resources plan. Groundwater studies (Lake Urmia Watershed) report. Iran Ministry of Energy’s Office for Water and Wastewater Macro-Planning
Poff NL, Allan JD, Bain MB, Karr JR, Prestegaard KL, Richter BD, Sparks RE, Stromberg JC (1997) The natural flow regime: a paradigm for river conservation and restoration. Bioscience 47:769–784
Sima S, Tajrishy M (2013) Using satellite data to extract volume–area–elevation relationships for Urmia Lake, Iran. J Great Lakes Res 39:90–99
Tennant DL (1976) Instream flow regimens for fish, wildlife, recreation and related environmental resources. Fisheries 1:1–10
Tharme RE (2003) A global perspective on environmental flow assessment: emerging trends in the development and application of environmental flow methodologies for rivers. River Res Appl 19:397–441
Torabi Haghighi A, Kløve B (2015) A sensitivity analysis of lake water level response to changes in climate and river regimes. Limnologica 51:118–130
Torabi Haghighi A, Kløve B (2017) Design of environmental flow regimes to maintain lakes and wetlands in regions with high seasonal irrigation demand. Ecol Eng 100:120–129
Torabi Haghighi A, Menberu MW, Aminnezhad M, Marttila H, Kløve B (2016) Can lake sensitivity to desiccation be predicted from lake geometry? J Hydrol 539:599–610
Tourian MJ, Elmi O, Chen Q, Devaraju B, Roohi S, Sneeuw N (2015) A spaceborne multisensor approach to monitor the desiccation of Lake Urmia in Iran. Remote Sens Environ 156:349–360
UNEP, GEAS (2012) The drying of Iran's Lake Urmia and its environmental consequences. Environmental Development 2:128–137
Webb EK (1966) A pan-lake evaporation relationship. J Hydrol 4:1–11
Zarghami M (2011) Effective watershed management; case study of Urmia Lake, Iran. Lake Reserv Manage 27:87–94
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
ESM 1
(DOCX 18 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Torabi Haghighi, A., Fazel, N., Hekmatzadeh, A.A. et al. Analysis of Effective Environmental Flow Release Strategies for Lake Urmia Restoration. Water Resour Manage 32, 3595–3609 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-018-2008-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-018-2008-3