Department of Water Science and Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.
Department of Irrigation and Reclamation Engineering, University of Tehran, Karaj Campus, Karaj, Iran.
Sci Rep. 2022 May 16;12(1):8110. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-10262-4.
Recent research has greatly focused on the environmental water supplement of rivers individually and independently. However, a comprehensive and integrated view of all rivers in the basin is simultaneously required in closed basins leading to lakes and wetlands. This has affected Lake Urmia, which is the second largest saltwater lake in the world. It has been in danger of drying up in recent years as a result of not allocating the required environmental flow (e-flow) due to the increase in water resource consumption in the agricultural sector and climate changes. In this study, a method derived from the flow duration curve shifting (FDCS) method is presented in addition to explaining the possibility of providing the e-flow of rivers leading to the lake. The method can make the least amount of change in the hydrological characteristics of rivers while providing the volume of required water by the ecosystem of lakes or downstream wetlands. Unlike the conventional method which presents the results on a monthly basis, the above-mentioned method is based on daily data of hydrometric stations and can calculate the amount of the environmental requirement of rivers in real-time according to the upstream inlet of the river. This method has been used in the Urmia Lake basin. According to the results, it can provide the environmental requirement of the lake by allocating 70.5% of the annual flow of rivers and thus can save the lake and the ecosystem of the region from the current critical conditions.
最近的研究主要集中在河流的独立环境补水方面。然而，在封闭的流域中，包括湖泊和湿地在内，需要综合全面地看待所有河流。这影响到了乌尔米亚湖，它是世界上第二大咸水湖。由于农业部门水资源消耗增加和气候变化，该湖近年来一直面临干涸的危险，因为没有分配所需的环境流量 (e-flow)。在本研究中，除了解释为湖泊提供河流环境流量的可能性外，还提出了一种源自流量历时曲线移动 (FDCS) 方法的方法。该方法可以在为湖泊或下游湿地的生态系统提供所需水量的同时，对河流的水文特征进行最小的改变。与传统方法按月呈现结果不同，上述方法基于水文站的日数据，可以根据河流的上游入口实时计算河流的环境需求。该方法已在乌尔米亚湖流域中使用。根据结果，通过分配河流年流量的 70.5%，可以为湖泊提供环境需求，从而使湖泊和该地区的生态系统摆脱当前的危急状况。
