A Future Study of an Environment Driving Force (EDR): The Impacts of Urmia Lake Water-Level Fluctuations on Human Settlements

Abstract

Lake Urmia, one of the world’s largest salt lakes, is rapidly losing water and drying up. This environmental hazard has raised concerns about the consequences and impact on the surrounding communities. In this paper, we use a futuristic view (horizon of 10 years based on medium-term planning) to identify the main environmental drivers in the surrounding settlements of the Urmia Lake basin. A qualitative method, based on cross-impact analysis, was used as a means of future research. We also used a Delphi-based expert panel method to collect data and extract the environmental impacts of Urmia Lake. After the three rounds of the Delphi process, the expert panel reached a high level of agreement (100%) on the top 17 environmental consequences. Then, these consequences were classified by driving force and dependency using the MICMAC method. The results show that reducing pasture area, soil and water salinity, groundwater decline and depletion, and destruction of surrounding agricultural lands play a significant role in environmental change in Urmia Lake. Overall, any small change in these variables may lead to fundamental changes in the entire system.