Determining Anzali Wetland Environmental Water Requirement Using Eco-Hydrologic Methods

Wetlands are one of the important natural habitat across the world and have a lot of benefits especially for energy circulation in the environment. In this aqua habitat, animals and plants are dependent to each other and because of their ecological role the life can be continued at this ecosystem. To conserve environmental and socio-economic values of wetlands, determining their ecological water requirement is of vital importance. The international Anzali wetland, which has been enrolled at the Ramsar convention, was selected as the case study in this research and its environmental water requirement was determined through using a combined hydrologic- ecological method. In this method, historical hydrologic condition of rivers entering the wetland and the Caspian Sea surface level as the prominent and influential factors on the hydrologic condition of the wetland were analyzed and considering the most important ecological functions for the wetland the key index was selected. The relationship between the wetland’s depth-water surface level and the ecological condition of the selected index across the different parts of the wetland and during the past years were investigated. Based on the achieved results, the ecological level and the pertinent volume of the wetland at the two minimum and optimum conditions were determined.