Sharif Digital Repository

Urmia Lake in the northwest of Iran is the second largest hyper-saline lake worldwide. During the past two decades, a significant water level decline has occurred in the lake. The existing estimations for the lake water balance are widely variable because the lake bathymetry is unknown. The main focus of this study is to extract the volume-area-elevation (V-A-L) characteristics of Urmia Lake utilizing remote sensing data and analytical models. V-A-L equations of the lake were determined using radar altimetry data and their concurrent satellite-derived surface data. Next, two approximate models, a power model (PM) and a truncated pyramid model (TPM), were parameterized for Urmia Lake and...