Analysis of the Effects of Water Management Strategies and Climate Change on the Environmental and Agricultural Sustainability of Urmia Lake Basin, Iran

In arid and semi-arid areas, unsustainable development of irrigated agriculture has reduced the water level of large lakes such as Aral, Urmia, Hamoon, and Bakhtegan. Urmia Lake, as a hyper saline and very shallow lake, located in the northwest of Iran, has water level reductions of about 40 cm each year over the past two decades. In this research, the indices of environmental and agricultural sustainability are evaluated using performance criteria influenced by climate change and water management strategies for the Zarrinehrud and Siminehrud River basins as the largest sub-basin of Urmia Lake basin. Modeling of hydrologic behavior of these basins is performed using WEAP21 model. The model is analyzed for three future emission scenarios (A2, A1B, and B1), for the period of 2015–2040 and five water management scenarios: (1) keeping the existing situation; (2) crop pattern change; (3) improving the conveyance and distribution efficiency; (4) combining the improvement of conveyance and distribution efficiency with improving the application efficiency using modern technology; and (5) the combination of crop pattern change with the improvement of total irrigation efficiency. The results show that the highest values of indices of environmental sustainability and agricultural sustainability are related to the scenario of combining the crop pattern change with improving the total irrigation efficiency under the B1 emission scenario (B1S4)