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Your search keyword '"Khazaei, Bahram"' showing total 3 results
Start Over Author "Khazaei, Bahram" Topic lake urmia
3 results on '"Khazaei, Bahram"'

1. How Can Researchers and Managers Better Collaborate on Lake Urmia Restoration?

Author

Rosenberg, David E., Parsinejad, Masoud, Sima, Somayeh, Wurtsbaugh, Wayne A., Null, Sarah, Sorooshian, Armin, Raja, Omid, Govarchin Ghale, Yusef Alizade, Khazaei, Bahram, Morid, Saeed, and Utah State University

Subjects
restoration, managers, researchers, Lake Urmia, Life Sciences, collaboration
Abstract

The large decline in Lake Urmia's level since 1995 has prompted a correspondingly large increase in research to help inform lake restoration. Here we synthesize results from 451 English-language articles (Figure 1) to answer four lake restoration questions of interest to the public and lake managers. We ask: 1) What lake restoration levels were considered besides the ecological level of 1274.1 m? 2) How has the causeway affected lake conditions? 3) Do we know enough about lake limnology and ecology to facilitate recovery? And 4) what to learn from Great Salt Lake management? We seek to share these findings with Lake Urmia managers, solicit feedback, and identify next steps for restoration and collaborative work.

Published
2020

2. Climatic or regionally induced by humans? Tracing hydro-climatic and land-use changes to better understand the Lake Urmia tragedy.

Author

Khazaei, Bahram, Khatami, Sina, Alemohammad, Seyed Hamed, Rashidi, Lida, Wu, Changshan, Madani, Kaveh, Kalantari, Zahra, Destouni, Georgia, and Aghakouchak, Amir

Subjects
*CLIMATE change, *LAND use, *WATER levels, *WATER consumption, *ATMOSPHERIC models
Abstract

Highlights • Joint analysis of human-landscape and climate drivers of lake shrinkage was performed. • Climate change is not the main cause of water level decline in Lake Urmia. • Agricultural vegetation expansion since 2000 has increased upstream water consumption. • Increased water consumption is the likely driver of Lake Urmia desiccation. Abstract Lake Urmia—a shallow endemic hypersaline lake in northwest Iran—has undergone a dramatic decline in its water level (WL), by about 8 m, since 1995. The primary cause of the WL decline in Lake Urmia has been debated in the scientific literature, regarding whether it has been predominantly driven by atmospheric climate change or by human activities in the watershed landscape. Using available climate, hydrological, and vegetation data for the period 1981–2015, this study analyzes and aims to explain the lake desiccation based on other observed hydro-climatic and vegetation changes in the Lake Urmia watershed and classical exploratory statistical methods. The analysis accounts for the relationships between atmospheric climate change (precipitation P, temperature T), and hydrological (soil moisture SM, and WL) and vegetation cover (VC; including agricultural crops and other vegetation) changes in the landscape. Results show that P, T, and SM changes cannot explain the sharp decline in lake WL since 2000. Instead, the agricultural increase of VC in the watershed correlates well with the lake WL change, indicating this human-driven VC and associated irrigation expansion as the dominant human driver of the Lake Urmia desiccation. Specifically, the greater transpiration from the expanded and increasingly irrigated agricultural crops implies increased total evapotranspiration and associated consumptive use of water (inherently related to the irrigation and water diversion and storage developments in the watershed). Thereby the runoff from the watershed into the lake has decreased, and the remaining smaller inflow to the lake has been insufficient for keeping up the previous lake WL, causing the observed WL drop to current conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2019
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