The evaluation of the impact of the anthropogenic factors on Lake Urmia crisis using Remote Sensing and GIS

Lake Urmia is considered as one of the country’s most important aquatic habitats and has experienced significant changes in recent years due to various factors, such as the climate changes (Abbaspour et al., 2012), anthropogenic activities (Zeinoddini et al., 2009) and the lack of a comprehensive management approach (Garousi et al., 2013) in the Lake Basin. Hence, the evaluation of changes in its different characteristics during decades is of great importance. In this study, changes in key parameters such as sea surface temperature, saline features and vegetation are studied using satellite imagery, remote sensing and fieldwork. The main purpose of this study is to conduct a supervised monitoring in order to evaluate Lake Urmia crisis in regard to human-involved factors such as the effects of the agriculture sector and the construction of the causeway bridge. Providing a comprehensive spatial database to determine the impact of each parameter on the Lake Urmia crisis is another objective of this study.