Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment, Environmental Engineering Sciences Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32601, United States of America.
Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment, Environmental Engineering Sciences Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32601, United States of America.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 May 10;768:144445. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144445. Epub 2021 Jan 6.
The Mesopotamian Marshlands are the largest wetland system in the Middle East. Historically, these marshes served as the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and they are currently connected to these rivers via surface water feeder canals. Historically, the Mesopotamian marshes received consistent flood pulses during the spring season from March to May. In recent decades, however, several large dams have been constructed in the Tigris and Euphrates basins for irrigation purposes and power generation, severely altering the flow regime, which along with other direct anthropogenic activities, has severely degraded the marsh ecosystem. This work quantifies changes in the riverine flow regime and how they have affected the hydro-pattern of the western Mesopotamian marshes (focusing on the western Al-Hammar marsh) and describes the role of hydrological drivers that are important for marsh restoration. The total area of the Al-Hammar marshes has been reduced from an average of 2800 km before 1970 to a minimum of 240 km in recent decades, concomitant with reductions in annual average Euphrates River flow (at Hit) from 967 to 602 m/s and marked flow regime alteration. While climate warming and reduced precipitation were observed in the basin, changes in the fundamental precipitation-flow relationship implicate infrastructural changes (upstream dams) as the primary reason for these changes. This analysis quantified how flow variability under historic and contemporary conditions have affected wetland area and other hydro-pattern characteristics and suggests that at an annual average of least 70 m/s of water deliveries to the western Mesopotamian marsh are required to restore 1000 km of wetland area. Our hope is that this focus on the river-marsh connection will help inform predictive models and scenario analysis for restoration of this unique social-ecological system.
美索不达米亚湿地是中东地区最大的湿地系统。历史上，这些湿地是底格里斯河和幼发拉底河的洪泛平原，目前通过地表水补给运河与这些河流相连。历史上，美索不达米亚湿地在 3 月至 5 月的春季会定期受到洪水脉冲的影响。然而，近几十年来，底格里斯河和幼发拉底河流域为了灌溉和发电目的修建了几座大型水坝，严重改变了水流模式，再加上其他直接的人为活动，严重破坏了湿地生态系统。本研究量化了河川水流模式的变化及其对西部美索不达米亚湿地（重点关注西部哈马尔湿地）水文格局的影响，并描述了对湿地恢复很重要的水文驱动因素的作用。哈马尔湿地的总面积已从 1970 年之前的平均 2800 平方公里减少到最近几十年的 240 平方公里，同时幼发拉底河（在希特）的年平均流量从 967 立方米/秒减少到 602 立方米/秒，水流模式发生了明显变化。尽管该流域观测到气候变暖以及降水量减少，但基本降水-流量关系的变化表明，基础设施变化（上游水坝）是造成这些变化的主要原因。本分析量化了历史和当代条件下的流量变化如何影响湿地面积和其他水文格局特征，并表明，每年需要至少 70 立方米/秒的水输送到西部美索不达米亚湿地，才能恢复 1000 平方公里的湿地面积。我们希望，对河流-湿地关系的关注将有助于为这一独特的社会-生态系统的恢复提供预测模型和情景分析。
