Investigating the Land Subsidence around Urmia Lake using Geodetic Observations

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Head of leveling and InSAR office, Geodesy and Land Surveying Department, National Cartographic Center of Iran.

2 Deputy Director of the Geodesy and Land Surveying Department, National Cartographic Center of Iran

3 Geodesy and Land Surveying Department, National Cartographic Center of Iran.

Abstract

Considering the critical situation of the Urmia Lake and the decision made by the government on its restoration, attention should be given to the effects of over-exploitation of the ground water resources in the plains upstream the lake plays a critical role in recharging and restoring the lake. In various areas of Iran, over-extraction of ground water resources for agricultural purposes caused land subsidence. Similarly in the plains around Lake Urmia, the agricultural development and pressure on ground water resources caused the subsidence of a significant area in the region. In this study, a subsidence map of the Urmia Lake’s surrounding areas was assessed by applying combined various geodetic observations. Results showed that there are 13 subsidence areas around Urmia Lake. The maximum rate of subsidence in these areas is 18.9 cm/yr and unfortunately 70 percent of the perimeter of the lake is subsiding. The area of subsidence is about 4000 square kilometers. Considering the subsidence hazards to water and soil resources of the region, ground water resource management, optimal cultivation pattern performance and modern irrgation methods should be accounted for urgently.
 
 

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Amighpey M, Arabi S, Talebi A, Jamoor Y (2008) Studying subsidence area in Iran applying Precise leveling remeasurement. Surveying 20(4):5-15 (In Persian)
Amighpey M, Arabi S (2023) Comprehensive Iran subsidence atlas. National Cartographic Center of Iran, Tehran (In Persian)
Amini M, Kouhestani H, Kazemiyeh F (2020) Effects of water-level decline in Urmia Lake on rural areas (Case study: Dole District, Urmia). Environmental Sciences 18(2):165-186
Bagheri M, Dehghani M, Esmaeili A, Akbari V (2019) Assessment of land subsidence using interferometric synthetic aperture radar time series analysis and artificial neural network in a geospatial information system case study of Rafsanjan Plain. Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 13(4):44-53
Dadaser-Celik F, Celik M (2017) Modelling surface water-groundwater interactions at the Palas Basin (Turkey) using FREEWAT. Italian Journal of Groundwater 6(3):53-60
Fanni Z, Maroofi A (2017) The drought’s effects of Urmia Lake on natural and human disasters. Vulnerability of Peripheral Area 2(58):1-16
Farhoudi-Hafdaran R, Ketabchi H (2018) Numerical simulation of Urmia Lake and Ajabshir coastal aquifer interaction. Iran-Water Resources Research 14(1):45-58
Ghayournajarkar N, Fukushima Y (2022) Using InSAR for evaluating the accuracy of locations and focal mechanism solutions of local earthquake catalogues. Geophysical Journal International 230(1):607-622 
Grannemann, N G, Hunt, R J, Nicholas J R, Reilly TE, Winter T C (2000) The importance of ground water in the great Lakes Region. U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Investigations Report, 4008:19p.
Hosseini-Moghari, S M, Araghinejad S, Tourian M J, Ebrahimi K, Döll P (2020) Quantifying the impacts of human water use and climate variations on recent drying of Lake Urmia basin: The value of different sets of space borne and in situ data for calibrating a global hydrological model. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 24:1939–1956
Poland M P, Zebker H A (2022) Volcano geodesy using InSAR in 2020: The past and next decades. Bulletin of Volcanology 84(3):27
Rahimi A, Breuste J (2021) Why is Lake Urmia drying up? Prognostic modeling with land-use data and artificial neural network. Frontiers in Environmental Science 9:603916
Sayyah A,Sadat rahmati F (2017) Modeling local society participant in restoration of lake Urmia by applying stable agriculture. Mehre Sadegh publication, Tehran, (In Persian)
Shemshaki A, Karami Gh (2018) Spatial and temporal variation of groundwater flow in southeastern bank of Urmia Lake. Hydrogeology 4(1)
Sophocleous M (2002) Interaction between groundwater and surface water: The state of the science. Journal of Hydrogeology 10(1):52 –67
Zekster I S (1996) Groundwater discharge into lakes: A review of recent studies with particular regard to large saline lakes in central Asia. International Journal of Salt Lake Research 4:233-249
 
Iran-Water Resources Research
Volume 19, Issue 2 - Serial Number 65
Special Issue: Urmia Lake
September 2023
Pages 196-206

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 20 June 2023
  • Revise Date: 29 July 2023
  • Accept Date: 02 August 2023

Share

How to cite

Statistics