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Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia

Schulz, Stephan ; Darehshouri, Sahand ; Hassanzadeh, Elmira ; Tajrishy, Massoud ; Schüth, Christoph (2020)
Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia.
In: Scientific Reports, 2020, 10 (1)
doi: 10.25534/tuprints-00011396
Article, Secondary publication

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Item Type: Article
Type of entry: Secondary publication
Title: Climate change or irrigated agriculture – what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia
Language: English
Date: 24 January 2020
Place of Publication: Darmstadt
Year of primary publication: 2020
Publisher: Springer Nature
Journal or Publication Title: Scientific Reports
Volume of the journal: 10
Issue Number: 1
DOI: 10.25534/tuprints-00011396
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Origin: Secondary publication
Abstract:

Lake Urmia is one of the largest hypersaline lakes on earth with a unique biodiversity. Over the past two decades the lake water level declined dramatically, threatening the functionality of the lake’s ecosystems. There is a controversial debate about the reasons for this decline, with either mismanagement of the water resources, or climatic changes assumed to be the main cause. In this study we quantified the water budget components of Lake Urmia and analyzed their temporal evolution and interplay over the last five decades. With this we can show that variations of Lake Urmia’s water level during the analyzed period were mainly triggered by climatic changes. However, under the current climatic conditions agricultural water extraction volumes are significant compared to the remaining surface water inflow volumes. Changes in agricultural water withdrawal would have a significant impact on the lake volume and could either stabilize the lake, or lead to its complete collapse.

URN: urn:nbn:de:tuda-tuprints-113967
Classification DDC: 500 Science and mathematics > 550 Earth sciences and geology
Divisions: 11 Department of Materials and Earth Sciences > Earth Science
Date Deposited: 24 Jan 2020 12:04
Last Modified: 11 Jan 2024 10:01
URI: https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/id/eprint/11396
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