| 1. |
- Ashraf, Samaneh, et al.
(författare)
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Compounding effects of human activities and climatic changes on surface water availability in Iran
- 2019
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Ingår i: Climatic Change. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0165-0009 .- 1573-1480. ; 152:3-4, s. 379-391
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- By combining long-term ground-based data on water withdrawal with climate model projections, this study quantifies the compounding effects of human activities and climate change on surface water availability in Iran over the twenty-first century. Our findings show that increasing water withdrawal in Iran, due to population growth and increased agricultural activities, has been the main source of historical water stress. Increased levels of water stress across Iran are expected to continue or even worsen over the next decades due to projected variability and change in precipitation combined with heightened water withdrawals due to increasing population and socio-economic activities. The greatest rate of decreased water storage is expected in the Urmia Basin, northwest of Iran, (varying from -8.3mm/year in 2010-2039 to -61.6mm/year in 2070-2099 compared with an observed rate of 4mm/year in 1976-2005). Human activities, however, strongly dominate the effects of precipitation variability and change. Major shifts toward sustainable land and water management are needed to reduce the impacts of water scarcity in the future, particularly in Iran's heavily stressed basins like Urmia Basin, which feeds the shrinking Lake Urmia.
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| 2. |
- Ashraf, Batool, et al.
(författare)
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Quantifying Anthropogenic Stress on Groundwater Resources
- 2017
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study explores a general framework for quantifying anthropogenic influences on groundwater budget based on normalized human outflow (h(out)) and inflow (h(in)). The framework is useful for sustainability assessment of groundwater systems and allows investigating the effects of different human water abstraction scenarios on the overall aquifer regime (e.g., depleted, natural flow-dominated, and human flow-dominated). We apply this approach to selected regions in the USA, Germany and Iran to evaluate the current aquifer regime. We subsequently present two scenarios of changes in human water withdrawals and return flow to the system (individually and combined). Results show that approximately one-third of the selected aquifers in the USA, and half of the selected aquifers in Iran are dominated by human activities, while the selected aquifers in Germany are natural flow-dominated. The scenario analysis results also show that reduced human withdrawals could help with regime change in some aquifers. For instance, in two of the selected USA aquifers, a decrease in anthropogenic influences by similar to 20% may change the condition of depleted regime to natural flow-dominated regime. We specifically highlight a trending threat to the sustainability of groundwater in northwest Iran and California, and the need for more careful assessment and monitoring practices as well as strict regulations to mitigate the negative impacts of groundwater overexploitation.
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