Temporal and spatial variability of groundwater salinity in Urmia plain

Subject Areas : Farm water management with the aim of improving irrigation management indicators

Reza  Sokouti Oskoee ¹ (Assistant Professor; Agriculture and Natural Resources Research Center of West Azarbaijan; Urmia; Iran)

Received: 2011-06-15 Accepted : 2012-04-26 Published : 2012-09-02

Keywords: geostatistics, groundwater salinity, Kriging, Urmia,

Abstract :

The intensify process of lowering Urmia lake level has led to reduce water quality, making it brackish and unusable in wells of Lake Marginal Lands. The present study investigated changes in groundwater salinity in Urmia plain using geostatistical models, and compares the results of the mapping in three time periods. To assess salinity of the groundwater, data from 57 wells in the period of 1380, 1384 and 1387 were analyzed, using Kriging in GIS, GS+ and ARCVIEW8 softwares. The results indicated that application of Kriging, experimental semi-variogram with spherical model provided better predictions with correlation coefficient of 0.99. According to the obtained groundwater salinity maps, land area with more than 2 dS/m groundwater salinity in 1380 was equal to 1924 hectares that has increased to 8331 hectares in 1387. During these years, in the study area the groundwater salinity with less than 1 dS/m was decreased about 14675 hectares. The observed maximum salinity value in 1380 has increased from 1.91 to 5.8 dS/m in 1387.