Sharif Digital Repository

The interaction between a lake and groundwater has important implications to the quantity and quality of water in both environments. Quantification of lake-groundwater interaction (LGI) has been challenging in regions with limited in-situ data. LGI can be quantified by physically-based models, direct measurement of seepage, measurements of conservative chemical or isotopic tracers, and lake water balance. Despite the accuracy of the methods based on hydrochemical or isotopic measurements and analysis, they require extensive field data that are costly to collect in large lakes. Instead, the data required to quantify LGI by the lake water budget method can be obtained via typical ground... 

Urmia Lake is a large hyper-saline lake located in the northwest of Iran. It plays an important role in the hydrology, climate and ecology of its surrounding regions. In recent years, the water level of Urmia Lake has been dropped significantly. This study investigates the seasonal and annual variations of the lake area from 2000 to 2011 using remote sensing data. MODIS imageries of Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) were used to extract the water surface area of the lake. Results reveal a significant decline in the lake area during the last past 12 years. Analysis of the seasonal images shows that maximum and minimum areas of Urmia Lake usually occur in winter and autumn,... 

Lake surface temperature is an important indicator of the lake state and a driver of regional weather and climate near large lakes. The objective of this study is to use thermal imagery from the MODIS on board the Earth Observing System Terra and Aqua platforms to assess the spatial and temporal variations in Urmia lake temperature. Urmia Lake, located in northwestern Iran is one of the largest permanent hypersaline lakes in the world. The surface temperature of Urmia Lake is examined between 2008 and 2009, as dry years. MODIS-derived lake SWT then was calibrated with monthly observations. MODIS-derived lake SWT exhibits a cool bias (-0.72°C) relative to in situ temperature observations in... 

In this paper we examine how exchange flow in Urmia Lake plays a crucial role in dynamics of the lake. Urmia Lake, a very large hyper-saline lake of high ecological significance, is located in northwest of Iran with a 15-km causeway dividing it into north and south lakes. A 1250-m opening in the causeway near the east coast links the two lakes. The differences in mean water levels and densities of the two lakes increase in spring due to large freshwater inflows into the south lake. High evaporation dominates the lake in summer. By incorporating the results of a two-layer hydraulics theory into a mixing model of the lake, we show that the exchange flow through the opening diminishes the water... 

Contribution of different Middle Eastern dust origins to PM10 (PM with aerodynamic diameters less than 10 µm) levels in several receptor large cities in Iran was investigated. Initially, the major regional dust episodes were determined through statistical analysis of recorded PM levels at air quality stations and verified using satellite images. The particles dispersion was simulated by Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) to regenerate PM10 during the dust episodes. The accuracy of the modeled results was rather convincing, with an average squared correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.7 (max = 0.95). Consequently, the contributions of different dust sources to the... 

Study region: This study develops the first daily runoff forecast system for Bukan reservoir in Urmia Lake basin (ULB), Iran, a region suffering from water shortages and competing water demands. Study focus: A weather forecast downscaling model is developed for downscaling large-scale raw weather forecasts of ECMWF and NCEP to small-scale spatial resolutions. Various downscaling methods are compared, including deterministic Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN). Downscaled precipitation and temperature forecasts are then fed into a rainfall-runoff model that accounts for daily snow and soil moisture dynamics in the sub-basins upstream of Bukan reservoir.... 

Lake Urmia (LU) is the second largest hypersaline lake in the world. Lake Urmia's water level has dropped drastically from 1277.85 m to 1270.08 m a.s.l (equal to 7.77 m) during the last 20 years, equivalent to a loss of 70% of the lake area. The likelihood of lake-groundwater connection on the basin-scale is uncertain and understudied because of lack of basic data and precise information required for physically-based modeling. In this study, cross-correlation analysis is applied on a various time-frames of water level of the lake and groundwater levels (2001–2018) recorded in 797 observation wells across 17 adjacent aquifers. This provides insightful information on the lake-groundwater... 

This study investigated the lake–aquifer hydraulic interactions in Lake Urmia (LU) as the second largest hypersaline lake in the world. Due to the scarcity of hydrogeological data required for modelling, a method based on Darcy’s Law and lake water budget was used to quantify the lake–aquifer interaction. Long-term ground- and satellite-based hydrological datasets over the time frame 2001–2019 were used. Results indicate that the groundwater flux between LU and the aquifers controls 18.74 ± 1.67% of the lake’s water storage. While 10 out of 14 adjacent aquifers recharge LU at a rate of less than 180 m3/m.month, one phreatic aquifer recharges the LU up to 1400 m3/m.month. Two aquifers are... 

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... 

The main objective of this paper is to provide comparative quantitative examinations on the capabilities of two-dimensional horizontal and pseudo-three-dimensional (3D) modelling approaches for simulating spatial and temporal variability of the flow and salinity in Lake Urmia, Iran. The water quality in the lake has been an environmentally important subject partly because this shallow hypersaline aquatic ecosystem is considered to be one of the largest natural habitats of a unique multicellular organism, Artemia urmiana. This brine shrimp is the major food source for many of the protected and rare shorebirds that visit the lake. A.urmiana can grow and survive in certain ranges of salinity,... 

Public concern over environmental issues such as ecosystem degradation is high. However, restoring coupled human-natural systems requires integration across many science, technology, engineering, management, and governance topics that are presently fragmented. Here, we synthesized 544 peer-reviewed articles published through September 2020 on the desiccation and nascent recovery of Lake Urmia in northwest Iran. We answered nine questions of scientific and popular interest about causes, impacts, stabilization, recovery, and next steps. We find: (1) Expansion of irrigated agriculture, dam construction, and mismanagement impacted the lake more than temperature increases and precipitation... 

Controlling evaporation plays an essential role in arid and semi-arid water resources systems where it accounts for a considerable amount of reservoirs outflow. In this study, we have evaluated evaporation reduction efficiency of different kinds of self-assembled nano-thickness films. The films consist of six different combinations of stearyl and cetyl alcohols with additives such as jojoba oil, stearic acid, and calcium hydroxide. The study lasted from July to August and utilized two pairs of class A evaporation pans: one pair was semi-floating on Chitgar lake water surface while the other one was located on the shore. The experimental results showed that a monolayer containing 3:1 stearyl... 

Understanding of how anthropogenic droughts occur in socio-hydrological systems is critical in studying resilience of these systems. This is especially relevant when a “lock-in” toward watershed desiccation occurs as an emergent outcome of coupling among social dynamics and surface and underground water processes. How the various processes collectively fit together to reinforce such a lock-in and what may be a critical or ignored feedback worsening the state of the socio-hydrological systems remains poorly understood. Here we tackle this gap by focusing on the case of Lake Urmia in Iran, a saline lake that faces the same fate as that of Aral Sea due to over-extraction of water sources that... 

Lake Urmia is the second-largest hypersaline lake in the world. There has been a drastic water level drop of 7.2 m from 1995 to 2016. Beginning in October 2013, the Lake Urmia Restoration Plan (LURP) launched a 10-year program. An increase in water level and a relative improvement in Lake Urmia condition has been observed since 2017. It is an undecided and controversial issue whether the recent positive trend of Lake Urmia has been due to the LURP activities or it is a natural contribution of climate factors variations. To shed some light on this issue, we examine three other lakes, adjacent to the Lake Urmia basin, with similar rainfall variability to investigate their status during the... 

Lake Urmia in Iran has undergone catastrophic desiccation due to increasing anthropogenic development, especially in the agricultural sector. A paramount national goal is to restore the lake to its former healthy condition, but corresponding water governance and restoration efforts have encountered various, mostly human-related, challenges. We argue here that these challenges stem from lack of awareness and insufficient consideration of the local social conditions and the subtleties of human-water interactions, which we collectively refer to as socio-hydrological barriers. Ignorance of such socio-hydrological barriers can lead to policy efforts that are mismatched with local realities and,... 

Remote sensing is an effective tool for capturing spatial and temporal variations of water surface temperature (WST) in large lakes. The WST of Urmia Lake in northwestern Iran was examined from 2007 to 2010, using MODIS land surface temperature (LST) products. Spatial and temporal (diurnal, monthly, seasonal and inter-annual) variations of Urmia Lake WST were also investigated. Results indicate that the MODIS-derived WSTs are in a good agreement with the in situ data (R2=0.92 and bias=-0.27). Spatial analysis of WST revealed that there are three thermal zones along the lake: the shallow region in barriers of the causeway, islands and the shoreline; the south part; and the deep north parts.... 

With all the improvement in wave and hydrodynamics numerical models, the question rises in our mind that how the accuracy of the forcing functions and their input can affect the results. In this paper, a commonly used numerical third-generation wave model, SWAN is applied to predict waves in Lake Michigan. Wind data are analyzed to determine wind variation frequency over Lake Michigan. Wave predictions uncertainty due to wind local effects are compared during a period where wind has a fairly constant speed and direction over the northern and southern basins. The study shows that despite model calibration in Lake Michigan area, the model deficiency arises from ignoring wind effects in small... 

Atmospheric aerosols affect the Earth's climate, air quality, and thus human health. This study used the Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and the Ångström exponent to cluster different particle types over the Lake Urmia Basin. This classification found desert dust and marine (mixed with continental or local-pollution aerosols) as two main aerosol types over the region, while their sources are not well defined. Although different air masses and wind circulation over the study domain in varied months can help to distinguish aerosol sources, measurements are crucial for a complete evaluation  

Lake Urmia is a thalassohaline ecosystem. It is an extremely simple ecological pyramid. This makes it a very sensitive ecosystem. This ecosystem has been facing various threats regarding the amount of water released from the associated basin. To calculate the lake water requirement with an ecological approach, we identified three variables: ecology, water quality, and water quantity indices as environmental indicators. The ecological index represented by Artemia urmiana is considered as an independent variable; while, the water quality index represented by concentration of NaCl, and the water quantity index represented by water elevation are regarded as dependent variables. The salinity...