Agricultural Water Consumption Management Approach in Urmia Lake Restoration

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.