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| Titel |
Preserving the World Second Largest Hypersaline Lake under Future Irrigation and Climate Change |
| VerfasserIn |
Somayeh Shadkam, Ludwig Fulco, Michelle van Vliet, Amandine Pastor, Pavel Kabat |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2016
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 18 (2016) |
| Datensatznummer |
250123966
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2016-3314.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Urmia Lake, the world second largest hypersaline lake, has been largely desiccated over the
last two decades resulting in socio-environmental consequences similar or even larger than
the Aral Sea disaster. To rescue the lake a new water management plan has been proposed, a
rapid 40% decline in irrigation water use replacing a former plan which intended to develop
reservoirs and
irrigation. However, none of these water management plans, which have large
socio-economic impacts, have been assessed under future changes in climate and water
availability. By adapting a method of environmental flow requirements (EFRs) for
hypersaline lakes, we estimated annually 3.9•109 m3 water is needed to preserve Urmia Lake.
Then, the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model was forced with
bias-corrected climate model outputs for both the lowest (RCP2.6) and highest (RCP8.5)
greenhouse-gas concentration scenarios to estimate future water availability and impacts of
water management strategies. Results showed a 10% decline in future water availability in the
basin under RCP2.6 and 27% under RCP8.5. Our results showed that if future climate change
is highly limited (RCP2.6) inflow can be just enough to meet the EFRs by implementing the
reduction irrigation plan. However, under more rapid climate change scenario (RCP8.5)
reducing irrigation water use will not be enough to save the lake and more drastic
measures are needed. Our results showed that future water management plans are not
robust under climate change in this region. Therefore, an integrated approach of
future land-water use planning and climate change adaptation is therefore needed to
improve future water security and to reduce the desiccating of this hypersaline lake. |
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