The Evaluation of Coastal Changes of Urmia Lake as a Critical Environmental Issue in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Urmia Lake is located in the north-west of Iran and as a largest habitat for Artemia is identified in the world. The last decade drought episodes and recent dam construction programs have simultaneously caused more evaporation of the lake water and thus considerable variations of water surface levels. These procedures cause many environmental and ecological hazards in the north west of Iran. In this research with attention to the role and significance of urmia lake in environmental and ecological balancing in the northwest of Iran, effort has been done to use remote sensing data (TM, ETM+ and Aster) and GIS to analyse the coast line changes of Urmia lake between 1989 and 2005. The results show that decrease of precipitation and negative effects of man made phenomena like dams and precipitous use of water resources (surface and underground waters) in Urmia lake region causes a full environmental/ecological crisis with retreat of the lake water and its continuing process, causes agricultural lands change to deserts.