Evaluation of surface water resources and consumptions of Zarrinehroud River Basin

Zarrinehroud River Basin is the largest sub-basin of Lake Urmia Basin and the most important water supplier for Lake Urmia. In recent years, Zarrinehroud has not been able to fully supply Lake Urmia due to a long period of drought and increased use of water by the basin dwellers, particularly water consumption by the agricultural sectors of the three provinces of the basin. Unstable and drying Lake and increasing water demands for irrigation purposes have caused water conflicts to be appeared in the region. The assessment of the water conflict resolutions was applied by the simulation of water demands and resources of Zarrinehroud Basin under consideration of four scenarios consisting of the current situation, optimistic, average and pessimistic scenarios regarding the future of water resources of the basin and agricultural developments. Six Management alternatives with respect to agricultural management, and six social, economic and environmental criteria were assessed, using Ultimatum and Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) with three different weighting methods. The results elucidate that the best alternative for all scenarios is the purchase of all water rights of the agricultural sectors of three provinces, except for the third scenario. The implementation of this management alternative overcomes the annual shortage of Lake Urmia in zeroth and first scenarios from 591 and 541 million cubic meters respectively, and decreases that from 411 to 505 million cubic meters in the second scenario. Making a decision about the third scenario needs more investigations as one single alternative is not proposed confidently.

Evaluation of surface water resources and consumptions of Zarrinehroud River Basin Keywords:

Simulation of water allocations , Ultimatum Game Theory , MCDM , Zarrineroud River Basin , Lake Urmia