Salinity Source Assessment in Shabestar-Sufian Aquifers by Natural Isotopes and Hydrochemical Methods

Shabestar - Sufian aquifers are one of the main important aquifers of East Azerbaijan Province. The salinity of this aquifers has increased during last decade. Therefore the quality of them has been decreased. Because of the importance of water resources issue and Urmia Lake, it has been decided to investigate on the cause of increasing of the salinity in groundwater of this area. During this research, in order to find the source of salinity and also its relationship with the Urmia Lake, the tracking methods have been used with natural isotopes. Former studies in similar cases had applied hydrochemical methods with the hydrogeological data. Therefore in this study, to get the better results, combined tracking by isotopes and hydrochemical methods has been used. According to this study, source of salinity of this aquifer is due to the evaporation, mixing and leaching processes by the geological formation. To sum up, there was no specific relationship between Urmia Lake and salinity of Shabestar - Sufian aquifers