New integrated hydrologic approach for the assessment of rivers environmental flows into the Urmia Lake

Recent research has greatly focused on the environmental water supplement of rivers individually and independently. However, a comprehensive and integrated view of all rivers in the basin is simultaneously required in closed basins leading to lakes and wetlands. This has affected Lake Urmia, which is the second largest saltwater lake in the world. It has been in danger of drying up in recent years as a result of not allocating the required environmental flow (e-flow) due to the increase in water resource consumption in the agricultural sector and climate changes. In this study, a method derived from the flow duration curve shifting (FDCS) method is presented in addition to explaining the possibility of providing the e-flow of rivers leading to the lake. The method can make the least amount of change in the hydrological characteristics of rivers while providing the volume of required water by the ecosystem of lakes or downstream wetlands. Unlike the conventional method which presents the results on a monthly basis, the above-mentioned method is based on daily data of hydrometric stations and can calculate the amount of the environmental requirement of rivers in real-time according to the upstream inlet of the river. This method has been used in the Urmia Lake basin. According to the results, it can provide the environmental requirement of the lake by allocating 70.5% of the annual flow of rivers and thus can save the lake and the ecosystem of the region from the current critical conditions.

Automated summary

This study introduces a new method to calculate the environmental water requirement of lakes based on real-time data from rivers, effectively protecting the lake ecosystem from drought, climate change, and other impacts.