IRAN-WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
Year:2015 | Volume:11 | Issue:1(32)|Papers Count:11

Urmia Lake water level has declined steeply during the last decade. Continuation of the present condition will damage the region’s industrial and agricultural sectors and even, creating a serious threat to the health of the inhabitants of the region. An integrated plan to save the lake was drawn by the lake basin stakeholders that resulted in an agreement allocating 3100 MCM of water per year to the lake. Supplying this sizable amount of water will not be easy when the total renewable water of the basin is about 6800 MCM per year. Definitely, one of the effective ways to fulfill such an agreement is to manage and reduce the basin’s agriculture water consumption as the main water user. Reducing the area under cultivation and considering the deficit irrigation were feasible measures focused in this paper. Furthermore, different simulation and optimization models were developed so that the agriculture sector receives minimum losses due to the new management approaches. The models were run for a 49-year period of naturalized water yield of the basin. Also, two scenarios were examined for water allocation to the lake, including full and partial allocations; depending on wet and dry water years. The results showed that to allocate the agreed water right for the Lake, it would be needed to reduce 25% to 35% of East Azerbaijan province’s agricultural water consumption. This amount should be redced by about 15% to 25% for the West Azerbaijan province. At the present time, Kurdistan province needs no reduction to fulfill its commitments.

Assessment of aquifer vulnerability and contamination is necessary for management, development and land use allocation, qualitative monitoring, pollution prevention and the groundwater protection. In this study, Degradetion and DRASTIC models using GIS technique (combining by Index-Overlay method) was used for assessment of Kashan aquifer land use and vulnerability impact on groundwater pollution. In prepared map of DRASTIC model, demonstrates determination coefficient of 26%, significant level of 0.05 with nitrate concentrations in aquifer and DRASTIC-LU model demonstrates significant level of 0.05 and determination coefficient of 31.5% by added land use (LU) layer. Based on this model was found 1.1 percent of aquifer has high vulnerability in northwest, west and south of aquifer due to land uses of urban, industrial and farmland, high net recharge, sand and high coarse grain material in impact of vadose zone, aquifer media, soil media. Also land uses of industrial, garden land, cropland, urban, dry farmland, moorland, grassland with rates of 10, 9, 8, 7, 5.5, 2.5, 2 respectively demonstrates most nitrate pollution effect on groundwater by the use of Degradation model and demonstrates inherent risk of 0.45 and significant level of 0.05 based on partial correlation.

Due to the water crisis and its non-uniform spatial and temporal distribution, it is essential to consider the conjunctive use of surface and groundwater resources. Considering the capability of WEAP model as a flexible, comprehensive, and transparent tool for assessing long-term conditions of the river-basin systems, it is utilized for simulating Zayandehroud water resources and developing different scenarios. Also MODFLOW model is used to simulate the aquifer system in this basin. In order to assess the imapcts of conjunctive use of surface and ground water resources, the developed MODFLOW model is imported into the WEAP model and WEAP-MODFLOW model is generated through a dynamic link.The impacts of different management scenarios on domestic, industrial, agricultural, and environmental water demands as well as the groundwater table are evaluated. The results showed that the demand management through modifying consumption patterns, executing water development projects, and constraining the agricultural development can offer the aquifers as long lasting and reliable water resources. Improving aquifer’s condition is also achieved acoordingly.

Evaporation which is the most important water output from terminal lakes, plays a significant role in the lakes water balance. It can also vary chemical compositions of lakes. This study aims at providing an accurate estimate of the evaporation rate from Urmia Lake. To accomplish this task, the SDDE (Salinity Dependent Daily Evaporation) model was developed based on the energy balance model and conjunctive use of the MODIS satellite data including water surface temperature, albedo, emissivity, cloud mask and precipitable water vapour and GIS techniques. The model was validated using insitu data. Then, evaporation maps of Urmia Lake were calculated using the SDDE model during 2010. Results showed that the rate and volume of evaporation during the non_cloudy months (April-Novemebr) were 1136 mm and 3.8 km3, respectively. Consequently, even if the environmental water requirement of the lake is supplied, the declining trend of its water level will continue.

Increase of need to water resources in order to supply various demands has caused complicated limitations and problems in access to fresh water. In Iran this issue is serious due to unbalanced spatial distribution of limited water resources and high demand sites. Accordingly, for a long time the interbasin water transfer has been a proposed approach to solve the problem of water shortage. Due to various decision making criteria and factors, studies of the inter-basin water transfer projects have been known as complex and difficult problems in literatures. In this research, optimum design of capacities for Behesht-Abad inter-basin water transfer system, from up-stream Karoun basin to Gavkhooni basin, has been studied through 6 possible scenarios using the river basin simulation model MODSIM. By applying multi-criteria decision making and fuzzy sets theory, the more beneficial scenario and justifiable volume of water transfer are selected. The simulation results show that there is a recent period of 10 year drought in basin’s river flow time series. So, the results are also compared for the hydrological drought period in the basin. It is seen that when considering the normal long term time series for river discharges, volume of 190 MCM is a sustainable limit for studied inter-basin water transfer system. Considering the recent drought time series, this volume would be 147 MCM.

Water and soil resources are most important for sustainability development. A watershed is not only simply the hydrological unit but also a social, economical, and environmental devision which plays crucial role in development of the country. Based on the national long term goals in water industry, different strategies are determined for the integrated water resources management in the national level. One of the most important problems in water management planning, especially in water allocation, is ranking the watersheds with respect to this various complexively related water strategies. A new method is proposed in this study based on ANP and fuzzy TOPSIS methods. This model is used to evaluate 5 critical watersheds in Iran named Urmia Lake, Atrak, Sefidrood, Namak, and Zayandehroud. In this decision making model, 38 water strategies (S1, S2,…,S38) are defined as sub criteria in 10 clusters (C1, C2,…, C10). These clusters are categorized according to economic, social, and environmental criteria. Also, the fuzzy arithmetic is applied to overcome the uncertainty in decision makers’ judgments. The important advantage of the proposed method is using triangular fuzzy numbers in all steps of the algorithm. The results are compared with ANP method to validate the proposed model. It is indicates that among different watersheds, Urmia Lake and Atrak show the highest and the lowest scores, respectively.

Reduction of Helmand River inflows is one of the main challenges of the water resources of the eastern part of Iran which is more pronounced in the recent years. This research aims to quantify the causes of this problem that accordingly has had direct impacts on dryness of the Hamoun Wetlands as an international Ramsar site. In the first step, the land use changes of Helmand plain in Afghanistan were evaluated in three periods from 1990 to 2011 using remote sensed data. Obviously direct sampling was not possible from the study area and therefore other sources of information including: FAO land use maps, Watershed Atlas of Afghanistan (AIMS), maps of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and Google Earth images were applied as the alternative data. It was concluded that the total irrigated area in the region has increased from 103,000 ha in 1990 to 122,000 ha in 2001 and to 167’000 ha in 2011 (62 percent increase). SWAT is run in the next step using the three created land use maps of the region. It was concluded that the average annual discharges of Helmand Basin at Char Burjak station (most downstream station in the Helmand plain) has decreased from 5.1 to 4.28 BMC due to the increase of these irrigated lands.

This research has been carried out to assess the life and economic losses caused by flood with especial attention on alluvial fan areas. For this study, Jamash River in Hormozgan province, Iran, which lies on an alluvial fan was selected. This river is wide, arterial, and with wild and seasonal nature. In this paper, the river flood was simulated with different return periods and different scenarios by Mike Flood model and the flood damage was estimated and analyzed using GIS environment. The results indicate significant hazard reduction when longitudinal walls and spillway are used for flood control. This is due to the effect on the aquifer in the alluvial fans.

In areas with limited water resources, the increases in water demands calls for alternative water sources. For such area one supply augmentation practice is the artificial groundwater recharge using wastewater effluent. The resulting reclaimed water is used primarily for non-potable purposes but under increasing stresses shifting to potable uses is also likely to happen. During recharge through the vadose zone and transport through the groundwater aquifer, the quality of water improves that are collectively described as Soil Aquifer Treatment (SAT). In this paper, a SAT management model is developed that considers monetary, water quality, and environmental concerns. Within the SAT model, the shuffled complex evolution algorithm (SCE) is used as the optimization tool. In this application, SCE is integrated with the simulation models (MODFLOW, MT3DMS) to represent movement and quality transformation. One steady state case on a general hypothetical aquifer were examined using the management model.

Urban and industrial activities lead to high amount of pollution in the produced wastewater. Direct discharges from such sites to the environment is not legal and sufficient treatments are needed. Discharge criteria in some cases are limited to the maximum and minimum allowable amounts. In some other cases certain standards with regards to the best available technologies and local and geographical considerations are applied. Standard as a word means a criterion or an index or any statement that includes regulations or guidelines or characteristics which are scientifically approved for a certain purpose or activity and are also verified by official authorities. The aim of a standard is to reach a defined level of discipline in a society. Standard policies in the EU for the management of municipal and industrial effluents in the form of a comprehensive program in EU is reviewed here. Finally the need for such standards and regulation in Iran is discussed and necessity of defining a comprehensive action for management of effluents in the country is emphasized.

For Qom city, the revision in consumption patterns and saving the household water consumption is a priority. Chargeable prepaid water meters are effective tools for consumption management that can provide necessary feedback for consumers. This study peruses the impact of prepaid meters on household water consumption management. A relationship has been investigated for the use of prepaid meters with the management of household water consumption and the costs of Qom Water and Wastewater Company. Data of this research has been analyzed by use of descriptive and inferential indicators using the methods of inferential statistics such as the mean of two Dependent Statistic Societies. Sampling was the main tool of this study and a part of the data of survey has been collected with use of a questionnaire containing closed questions. Simple random was the basis for the sampling. Library resources have also been used. The results show that considering the “temperature” as an affecting factor, the prepaid meters has been saved %14.36 in water consumption of households. Neglecting the temperature changes, per capita of water consumption has decreased by %13. The use of prepaid meters has decreased the Qom Water and Wastewater Company costs by 53% due to the skipping of reading services of the postpaid meters.