The Shrinking of Lake Urmia: Same Story, Different Lake

Lake Urmia, located in northwestern Iran, was once the largest lake in the Middle East (~5,200 km²) and one of the largest hypersaline lakes on Earth (~300 g/L salt concentration). Today, it has almost vanished. The lake reached its maximum water capacity in 1995, estimated at approximately 32 billion m³. Over the subsequent two decades, it experienced severe shrinkage, losing almost all of its surface area. This drastic decline was primarily attributed to anthropogenic activities such as dam construction and excessive agricultural water use, further exacerbated by reduced precipitation and climate change. During this period, several dams were built within the basin, and the major river inflows, including the Zarriné-Rūd, Simineh-Rūd, Mahabad River, Gadar River, and sections of the Zab River, were diverted or lost much of their flow due to consecutive droughts and extensive water withdrawal for irrigation and other applications.

This video shows how Lake Urmia’s size is changing over time.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a new story.
A similar tragedy occurred with the Aral Sea, once the third-largest lake in the world (68,000 km²), lying between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In the 1960s, large-scale diversion of its inflowing rivers for irrigation projects during the Soviet era caused the lake to shrink dramatically, turning much of it into desert by the 2010s.

And these are not isolated cases. Other lakes, such as Lake Chad, the Dead Sea, the Hamoun Lake, and the Great Salt Lake, are also drying up or shrinking significantly each year. If we do not learn from what happened to Lake Urmia and the Aral Sea, we will continue to see the mirror of the past again and again. These cases remind us that poor water management and short-term decisions can intensify by climate change and lead to irreversible environmental consequences.

Written by: Hadi Mokarizadeh, PhD, EIT | Linkedin 

References:

1. The images were taken  by the Sentinel-2 (ESA) and Landsat (NASA) satellites.

2. AghaKouchak, Amir, et al. "Aral Sea syndrome desiccates Lake Urmia: call for action." Journal of Great Lakes Research, 41.1 (2015): 307-311.

3. Alizadeh‐Choobari, O., et al. "Climate change and anthropogenic impacts on the rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia." International Journal of Climatology , 36.13 (2016): 4276-4286.

Useful Links