Water management in river-based and qanat- based regions

Due to scarcity of rainwater and water resources, water-related issues have been of great importance in Iran. Alborz and Zagros mountain chains, respectively in the north and the west of Iran, have prevented the central plateau to receive appropriate amounts of rainfall; in other words some regions benefit from higher precipitation amounts and thus permanent rivers, other regions rely solely on groundwater resources. Obviously, the more limited the water resources, the more significant the water management becomes.Therefore, to this end the following questions were posed: Did the governments equally control water recourses in different regions, whether river-based or qanat-based? Or is there a difference in water management, based on the amount of accessible water resources? In case there is a significant difference in water management methods in different regions, what are those differences?  How much control and supervision did the governments of the time, have over water resources management in different regions?This study is a qualitative-analytical one. To conduct this study library data and references were used.The results show that in river-based regions, water was controlled and supervised by the government. However, in regions where qanats were used, the water management system was handled by the qanat owners and the private sectors. Generally, the fewer the amount of accessible water is, the fewer the excess of agricultural production is. As a result, the income gained from those water resource were very low. Due to this, less attention was paid to such regions by the governments, and therefore, the governments were more focused on river-based regions as they could bring more income.