Sharif Digital Repository

Lake Urmia is the largest inner lake in Iran that has been dessicated continuously over the past two decades, and most of it has dried up. Urmia Lake basin is one of the country's agricultural and industrial pillars and has more than 5 million inhabitants. The conflict between people’s interests and the environmental ones besides increased demand for water harvesting has led to a reduction in water inflow to the lake. As the water resources management issues became more complex in last two decades with the entrance of political and socio-economical, the concept of water resources management has been promoted in the broader sense of water governance. The solution to the problem of Lake Urmia... 

The objective of this dissertation is to develop a model to monitor and project the long-term changes in meteorological drought under climate change at watershed scale. In this model, drought is defined based on joint precipitation-temperature values since negative correlation between precipitation and temperature implies that drier periods are often warmer, and therefore, the consequences of drought are more severe compared to low-precipitation periods with mild temperature. This is of particular importance considering global warming. To quantify drought, an indicator called precipitation-temperature deciles index, which is an extension of precipitation deciles index, is introduced. Copula... 

Reducing water evaporation is one of the ways to overcome the low precipitation and drought conditions in water reservoirs. For this purpose, extensive studies have been investigated on physical and chemical coatings on lakes and reservoirs. Physical methods often involve the use of floating covers on the water surface to block evaporation by shading, most of which are only suitable for reservoirs with surface areas smaller than 5 hectares. In chemical methods, the evaporation can be decreased by nanomaterial coating, usually, containing long-chain molecules, which by spraying them on the surface, molecular monolayers are formed. In this study, the effect of nanometer coatings on the surface... 

Lake Urmia in northwest Iran is an important water body at the national and international level and plays a significant role in the natural, social, and economic aspects of life in the region. Unfortunately, as a result of natural and anthropologic factors, the lake has suffered a severe water decline in recent decades and was even on the verge of complete drying. Being aware of the catastrophic consequences of lake Urmia's desiccation, a megaproject called Urmia Lake Restoration Program (ULRP) aiming to revive the lake was launched in 2013. Failure in megaprojects is common and frequent in which a high level of uncertainty is one of the main contributing factors. The purpose of this study... 

Dry bed of lakes and surrounding areas play an important role in dust production. This work tries to develop an Aerosol Type Detection Index for the two regions of Lake Hamon in Sistan, Iran, and the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Using the parameters of Extinction Coefficient and Depolarization Ration of CALIPSO satellite, the proposed index differentiates and categorizes fine dust particles and clouds according to the physical behavior of each in absorbing and backscattering satellite rays. This index shows values between zero and 0.15 for desert dust and -0.3 to zero for polluted desert dust particles. In order to verify the accuracy of determining the type of particles by the proposed index,... 

Evaporation is the most important water loss from terminal lakes which can influence the chemistry of lakes. In large lakes, the spatial distributions of meteorological and water quality variables affect the evaporation rates. Therefore, it is crucial to consider such variations in estimating evaporation rates from large lakes. This study aims at developing an evaporation estimation model for saline lakes considering salinity and spatial distribution of variables in/over the lakes and investigating the interaction between meteorological, hydrological and water quality variables in natural saline systems. To accomplish these objectives, first a distributed model was developed for estimating... 

Lake Urmia is the largest hypersaline lake in Iran, as well as a significant aquatic habitat. In recent decades, extreme increasing of extent plans and exploitation of water resources in this basin, cause decreasing inflow, water level and creating several environmental and economic issues. In recent decades, the excessive expansion in the development and exploitation of this basin's water resources has resulted in a drop in the flows into the lake, a decline in the lake's water level, and the creation of several environmental and economic issues. In recent years, these stressors have caused the lake's salinity to exceed 400 g/L, and salt deposits have emerged on the lake bottom and... 

Lake Urmia is the largest inland lake of Iran and one of the most important water ecosystems in Iran and the world. The ecosystem of this lake is a typical example of a closed drainage basin into which all the runoff flows in the rivers of the basin are discharged. Because of its unique natural and ecological features, Urmia Lake has been declared as a national park since 1346, along with Kabudan and Qion Daghi islands, among the protected areas. Among the most important invertebrates in the lake, we can mention Artemia, which is a species of saltwater shrimp and one of the native species of Lake Urmia. This species is the most important source of food for many water birds such as flamingos.... 

Water shortages resulting from macro-environmental climate changes as well as local inefficient agricultural practices and dam constructions activities have resulted in the gradual reduction of water level in Urmia Lake, located in the northwest of Iran. As such, restoration efforts were initiated to prevent further adverse impacts exacerbating the conditions and creating secondary problems such as regional salt dust generation and dispersion, resulting in health issues for the greater area population in the neighboring vicinities. The utilization of advanced forecast modeling based on deep learning algorithms can assist the authorities to manage better multi-dimensional issues affecting the...