Investigating Ecosystem Services Provision Dynamics under Landuse/landcover Changes in the Lake Urmia Basin

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of ِDesert control and management., Faculty of Natural Resources and Earth Sciences, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran

2 , Department of Combating Desertification, Faculty of Natural Resources and Earth Science, University of Kashan, Kashan,

3 Professor, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The Lake Urmia has been experiencing intensive environmental degradation characterized by the enormous reduction of the lake area and water table. This has been mainly related to land use/cover changes, agricultural activities expansion and intensification. As land use changes is of the most important factors having effects on this system alterations, transitions between different land use classes and their effects on ecosystem services and goods have been considered using ecosystem services assessment matrix on the basis of experts advising approach. The results indicate that the lake area has been decreased from 4946.3 in 1987 to 2147.87 km2 in 2016 (50%) which is due to two times agricultural lands area expansion and 1538.43 km2 increase in comparison with the year 1987. Bare land and urban areas expansion is also considerable in the mentioned time period. In such conditions, although increasing ecosystem services supply such as two times agricultural products increase and water supply to 1.5 times in 1987-2016, the supply of other ecosystem services remained constant or have declined. According to the spatial hotspots studied in the lake basin, ecosystem regulating and cultural services as well as biodiversity mainly decreased at the shorelines of the lake, while provisioning services increased along the major rivers and close to cities. In this regard, understanding and studying the causes of this phenomena in a natural ecosystem would assist valuable landscapes conservation via spatial planning tools especially in sensitive and fragile ecosystems.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

AghaKouchak, A., Norouzi, H., Madani, K., Mirchi, A., Azarderakhsh, M., Nazemi, A., Nasrollahi, N., Farahmand, A., Mehran, A., Hasanzadeh, E., 2015. Aral Sea syndrome desiccates Lake Urmia: Call for action. J. Great Lakes Res. 41, 307–311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2014.12.007
 
Alborzi, A., Mirchi, A., Moftakhari, H., Mallakpour, I., Alian, S., Nazemi, A., Hassanzadeh, E., Mazdiyasni, O., Ashraf, S., Madani, K., Norouzi, H., Azarderakhsh, M., Mehran, A., Sadegh, M., Castelletti, A., AghaKouchak, A., 2018. Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 084010. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aad246
 
Alizade Govarchin Ghale, Y., Altunkaynak, A., Unal, A., 2018. Investigation Anthropogenic Impacts and Climate Factors on Drying up of Urmia Lake using Water Budget and Drought Analysis. Water Resour. Manag. 32, 325–337. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1812-5
 
Alizade Govarchin Ghale, Y., Baykara, M., Unal, A., 2017. Analysis of decadal land cover changes and salinization in Urmia Lake Basin using remote sensing techniques. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss. 1–15. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2017-212
 
Balkanlou, K.R., Müller, B., Cord, A.F., Panahi, F., Malekian, A., Jafari, M., Egli, L., 2020. Spatiotemporal dynamics of ecosystem services provision in a degraded ecosystem: A systematic assessment in the Lake Urmia basin, Iran. Sci. Total Environ. 716, 137100. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137100
Brodt, S., Six, J., Feenstra, G., Ingels, C., Campbell, D., 2011. Sustainable Agriculture. Nat. Educ. Knowl. 3, 1.
 
Burkhard, B., 2017. Ecosystem services matrix.
 
Burkhard, B., Muller, F., 2008. Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response, in: Elsevier B.V. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-008045405-4.00129-4
 
Burkhard, Benjamin, Kroll, F., Müller, F., Windhorst, W., Burkhard, B, 2009. Landscapes ‘ Capacities to Provide Ecosystem Services – a Concept for Land-Cover Based Assessments. Landsc. Online 15, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.3097/LO.200915
 
Chaudhari, S., 2017. MODELING AND REMOTE SENSING OF WATER STORAGE CHANGE IN LAKE URMIA BASIN, IRAN. Michigan State University.
 
Chaudhari, S., Felfelani, F., Shin, S., Pokhrel, Y., 2018. Climate and anthropogenic contributions to the desiccation of the second largest saline lake in the twentieth century. J. Hydrol. 560, 342–353. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.03.034
 
Delju, A.., Ceylan, A., Piguet, E., Rebetez, M., 2013. Observed climate variability and change in Urmia Lake Basin , Iran. Theor Appl Clim. 111, 285–296. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-012-0651-9
 
Faramarzi, N., 2012. Agricultural Water Use in Lake Urmia Basin, Iran: An Approach to Adaptive Policies and Transition to Sustainable Irrigation Water Use. Upsala University.
 
Franz, J., Fitzoy, F., 2006. Child mortality in Central Asia: social policy, agriculture and the environment. Cent. Asia Surv. 25, 481–498
.
Hossein Mardi, A., Khaghani, A., MacDonald, A.B., Nguyen, P., Karimi, Neamat, Heidary, P., Karimi, Nima, Saemian, P., Sehatkashani, S., Tajrishy, M., Sorooshian, A., 2018. The Lake Urmia environmental disaster in Iran: A look at aerosol pollution. Sci. Total Environ. 633, 42–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.03.148
 
Karki, S., Thandar, A.M., Uddin, K., Tun, S., Aye, W.M., Aryal, K., Kandel, P., Chettri, N., 2018. Impact of land use land cover change on ecosystem services: a comparative analysis on observed data and people’s perception in Inle Lake, Myanmar. Environ. Syst. Res. 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40068-018-0128-7
 
Khazaei, B., Khatami, S., Hamed, S., Rashidi, L., Wu, C., Madani, K., Kalantari, Z., Destouni, G., Aghakouchak, A., 2019. Climatic or regionally induced by humans ? Tracing hydro-climatic and land- use changes to better understand the Lake Urmia tragedy. J. Hydrol. 569, 203–217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.12.004
 
Kopperoinen, L., Itkonen, P., 2014. Using expert knowledge in combining green infrastructure and ecosystem services in land use planning : an insight into a new place-based methodology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-014-0014-2
 
Koschke, L., Fürst, C., Frank, S., Makeschin, F., 2012. A multi-criteria approach for an integrated land-cover-based assessment of ecosystem services provision to support landscape planning. Ecol. Indic. 21, 54–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2011.12.010
 
Liu, X., Yu, L., Yali, S., Zhangc, C., Lu, H., Yu, C., Gonga, P., 2018. Identifying patterns and hotspots of global land cover transitions using the ESA CCI Land Cover dataset. Remote Sens. Lett. 9, 972–981. https://doi.org/10.1080/2150704X.2018.1500070
 
Lotfi, A., 2012. Lake Uromiyeh A Concise Baseline Report, publication series of Conservation of Iranian Wetlands Project (IRI Department of Environment, United Nations Development Porgramme, Global Environment Facilities).
 
Micklin, P., 2007. The Aral Sea Disaster. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.earth.35.031306.140120
Montoya-tangarife, C., Barrera, F. De, Salazar, A., Inostroza, L., 2017. Monitoring the effects of land cover change on the supply of ecosystem services in an urban region : A study of Santiago-Valparaı Chile 1–22.
 
Nahuelhual, L., Carmona, A., Aguayo, M., Echeverria, C., 2014. Land use change and ecosystem services provision : a case study of recreation and ecotourism opportunities in southern Chile 329–344. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-013-9958-x
 
Sagan, C., Toon, O.B., Pollack, J.B., 1979. Anthropogenic Albedo Changes and the Earth’s Climate. Science.
 
Song, W., Deng, X., 2017. Land-use / land-cover change and ecosystem service provision in China. Sci. Total Environ. 576, 705–719. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.07.078
 
Stone, R., 2015. Saving iran’s great salt lake. Science (80-. ). 349, 1044–1047.
 
Tabari, J., Nikbakht, J., Talaee, P., 2012. Hydrological Drought Assessment in NorthwesternIran Based on Streamflow Drought Index (SDI). Water Resour. Manag. 27, 137–151
.
Team, R.C., 2014. R: A language and environment for statistical computing.
 
Vihervaara, P., Kumpula, T., Tanskanen, A., Burkhard, B., 2010. Ecosystem services – A tool for sustainable management of human – environment systems . Case study Finnish Forest Lapland 7, 410–420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecocom.2009.12.002
 
White, K.D., 2013. Nature – society linkages in the Aral Sea region. J. Eurasian Stud. 4, 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euras.2012.10.003
 
Zarrineh, N., Azari Najaf Abad, M., 2014. Integrated water resources management in Iran: Environmental, socio-economic and political review of drought in Lake Urmia. Int. J. Water Resour. Environ. Eng. 6, 40–48. https://doi.org/10.5897/ijwree2012.0380
 
Irrigation and Water Engineering
Volume 12, Issue 2 - Serial Number 46
December 2022
Pages 414-429

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics