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Title
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Monitoring and Assessment of Water Level Fluctuations of the Lake Urmia and Its Environmental Consequences Using Multitemporal Landsat 7 ETM+ Images
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Type
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JournalPaper
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Keywords
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Lake Urmia; Iran; water level fluctuation; environmental consequences; remote sensing; GIS
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Abstract
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The declining water level in Lake Urmia has become a significant issue for Iranian policy and decision makers. This lake has been experiencing an abrupt decrease in water level and is at real risk of becoming a complete saline land. Because of its position, assessment of changes in the Lake Urmia is essential. This study aims to evaluate changes in the water level of Lake Urmia using the space-borne remote sensing and GIS techniques. Therefore, multispectral Landsat 7 ETM+ images for the years 2000, 2010, and 2017 were acquired. In addition, precipitation and temperature data for 31 years between 1986 and 2017 were collected for further analysis. Results indicate that the increased temperature (by 19%), decreased rainfall of about 62%, and excessive damming in the Urmia Basin along with mismanagement of water resources are the key factors in the declining water level of Lake Urmia. Furthermore, the current research predicts the potential environmental crisis as the result of the lake shrinking and suggests a few possible alternatives. The insights provided by this study can be beneficial for environmentalists and related organizations working on this and similar topics.
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Researchers
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Hoang Nguyen (Not In First Six Researchers), Abolfazl Jaafari (Not In First Six Researchers), khabat khosravi (Not In First Six Researchers), Mehdi Ahmadi (Not In First Six Researchers), Masood Khodadadi (Not In First Six Researchers), Wei Chen (Not In First Six Researchers), Baharin Ben Ahmad (Not In First Six Researchers), Nadhir Al-Ansari (Fifth Researcher), Ataollah Shirzadi (Fourth Researcher), Himan Shahabi (Third Researcher), Ayub Mohammadi (Second Researcher), Viet-Ha Nhu (First Researcher)
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