Sharif Digital Repository

Water resources planning and management projects are done in order to accomplish several goals. Moreover, social, environmental, political etc impacts of such projects increase the complexity of the problem of choosing the best alternative among others. The project of diversion of water form Zab Watershed into Lake Urmia Watershed is one of these projects which regarding water demands and problems in Lake Urmia Watershed and also Zab Watershed water resources that exceed its water demands has been considered. Therefore, after conducting research studies, five locations have been determined as potential places to build a dam on the Zab River and transferring its water to Lake Urmia Watershed.... 

Groundwater resources are considered as important resources of fresh water specifically in arid and semi-arid regions like Iran. Urmia Lake (UL) basin is one of these regions where groundwater resources play an important role in supplying water and due to inappropriate water resources management during the last two decades it has faced serious problems, like declination of water level in UL. Groundwater and surface water form an integrated system in the UL basin and have a mutual effect on each other. Hence, any improvement in exploitation of aquifers in that region could benefit UL water demand management. Appropriate water resources management in Miandoab plain which transfer almost 50... 

Several countries in the Middle East – North Africa (MENA) region have been always faced drought in their histories, so they implementing many strategies to manage vital water resources for many years. Because of the volume of water available for food production has not been sufficient to meet increasing demands, it has became a critical issue today, to optimize the consumption of water. One of the best policies is to use financial tools to adjust the water usage.In this research we have studied the effects of two scenarios on the volume of water consumption. The firs scenario is to increase the water price, and we have studied the consumers’ reactions. The second scenario is to lend the... 

Tehran, the capital of Iran, like many megacities in the world is encountered with increasing freshwater demand and water resources limitation because of the rapid growth of population. In spite of the existence of neighboring water recourses; such as Karaj-Dam, Latian-Dam and Lar-Dam, and large usage of groundwater, the management of urban water demand is one of the biggest problems with this city. In this thesis, water reuse and wastewater recycling are considered as a sustainable solution for water supply and wastewater management of Tehran. A linear programming optimization model with the object of cost minimization is used to allocate water between users and resources, concerning the... 

Conservation of water and protection of water resources is considered as an important and fundamental element in sustainable development. In the southern regions of our country, access to fresh water is very difficult and it is very costly to supply. In Kish Island with an area of approximately 9000 Ha, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) is very important in terms of water supply and the environment and the natural ecosystem. Due to the confined and limited water resources available, and its reducing per capita, IWRM will become more important. In this regard,the Island's water resources (conventional and unconventional) need to be analyzed. Water systems can be modeled using... 

In this paper we seek to find the contribution of groundwater in irrigation agriculture in Iran. We use nationwide panel data of agricultural production in the period of 1993-2013. The results show us differences in productivity of agricultural outputs due to availability of groundwater. Panel data allows us to control regional factors like soil fertility affecting the productivity. We are looking for the main contributors to groundwater usage. Population growth in demand side and groundwater availability in supply side seem to be the most important factors  

Environmental flows supply critical contributions to wetland health and economic development, while wetlands are one of the richest ecosystems due to diversity of the ecological species. The Shadegan Wetland is the located in the south-west of Iran, at the top of the Persian Gulf. It is the largest wetland of the country with an area of almost 400,000 hectares. The wetland plays a significant role, both hydrological and ecological in the natural functioning of the northern coast of the Gulf. Moreover, Shadegan Protected Zone is of high economic and social importance, as its vegetation is assumed the main source of feeding the wildlife species. On the other hand, the wetland has the potential... 

Considering that the agricultural sector is the largest consumer of water in the basin of Lake Urmia, it seems necessary to provide comprehensive methods of water resources management and formulate appropriate policies to increase water productivity in this sector. For this reason, in this research, we examine the effects of creating a water market in the basin of Lake Urmia. For this purpose, models of agricultural economics and positive mathematical programming techniques at the regional level have been used for modeling to analyze the various effects of water market creation. According to the model, the farmer chooses his cultivation pattern according to the price of the crop and the... 

Lake Urmia in northwest Iran is an important water body at the national and international level and plays a significant role in the natural, social, and economic aspects of life in the region. Unfortunately, as a result of natural and anthropologic factors, the lake has suffered a severe water decline in recent decades and was even on the verge of complete drying. Being aware of the catastrophic consequences of lake Urmia's desiccation, a megaproject called Urmia Lake Restoration Program (ULRP) aiming to revive the lake was launched in 2013. Failure in megaprojects is common and frequent in which a high level of uncertainty is one of the main contributing factors. The purpose of this study...