Scenario-based analysis of the impacts of lake drying on food production in the Lake Urmia Basin of Northern Iran

In many parts of the world, lake drying is caused by water management failures, while the phenomenon is exacerbated by climate change. Lake Urmia in Northern Iran is drying up at such an alarming rate that it is considered to be a dying lake, which has dire consequences for the whole region. While salinization caused by a dying lake is well understood and known to influence the local and regional food production, other potential impacts by dying lakes are as yet unknown. The food production in the Urmia region is predominantly regional and relies on local water sources. To explore the current and projected impacts of the dying lake on food production, we investigated changes in the climatic conditions, land use, and land degradation for the period 1990–2020. We examined the environmental impacts of lake drought on food production using an integrated scenario-based geoinformation framework. The results show that the lake drought has significantly affected and reduced food production over the past three decades. Based on a combination of cellular automaton and Markov modeling, we project the food production for the next 30 years and predict it will reduce further. The results of this study emphasize the critical environmental impacts of the Urmia Lake drought on food production in the region. We hope that the results will encourage authorities and environmental planners to counteract these issues and take steps to support food production. As our proposed integrated geoinformation approach considers both the extensive impacts of global climate change and the factors associated with dying lakes, we consider it to be suitable to investigate the relationships between environmental degradation and scenario-based food production in other regions with dying lakes around the world.