The Investigation of Lake Urmia Drying Trend and Its Important Consequence on the Surrounding Settlements

During last decade’s drying trend of Lake Urmia led to the environmental, social and economic crisis in Iran’s North West region. In this regard, the main aim of this research is the detailed investigation of Lake Urmia drying trend and its important result. The research method is descriptive –analytic, and data collection has been based on library-documentary and survey methods. In this regard, using Landsat satellite images, drying trend of the Lake Urmia during the years 2000 - 2015 and its important consequences by DANP method were studied. The results showed that during the 2000- 2015 the Lake water decreased dramatically, especially in the 2010-2015. Also, the result show that environmental dimension (Weight 0.49), and indicators such as salt storm (0.1782), Desertification and its development in surrounding areas (weight 0.1236), Ethnicity and ethnic conflicts (weight 0.0884), Exacerbated climatic fluctuations and changes in the timing of seasons (weight 0.0767), And the loss of agricultural land and soil fertility (weight 0.0720) will be the most important consequence of the drying of Lake Urmia.