Scenario analysis for integrated water resources management under future land use change in the Urmia Lake region, Iran

Bagher Shirmohammadi, Arash Malekian, Ali Salajegheh, Bahram Taheri, Hossein Azarnivand, Ziga Malek and Peter H. Verburg

Land Use Policy, 2020, vol. 90, issue C

Abstract: Arid and semi-arid regions are particularly vulnerable to global environmental change because of their fragile climatic conditions. The rapid development of land use is expected to affect aquatic ecosystems in these regions. In this study, we focused on how land use change affects the stream flow and inflow to Urmia Lake in the Mordagh Chay basin, Iran. This case-study exemplifies dynamics found across a much larger region. We mapped changes in land use between 1993–2015 using satellite imagery and modeled future changes using the Dyna-CLUE model. We projected future land use change until 2030 under four scenarios: continuing of the current trend of water use, 40% water withdrawal reduction, and two other scenarios with 40% water withdrawal reduction and improvements of irrigation efficiency up to 50% and 85%. Between 1993–2015, 21% of the study area changed to orchard and arable land mostly at the cost of rangeland. However, upon reduction of water withdrawal our analyses showed that garden must decrease between 27% and 40%. Rainfed cropland is projected to experience a major increase in all scenarios, especially in the case of reduced water withdrawal, where it will increase by 217%. In order to achieve sustainable water resources management land use plays a major role and leads to different land use futures in this type of semi-arid regions.

Keywords: Land use change; Scenario; Development; Irrigation efficiency improvement; Urmia Lake; Iran (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837719307525
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:90:y:2020:i:c:s0264837719307525

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104299

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().