Assessment of environmental water requirement for rivers of the Miankaleh wetland drainage basin
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Assessment of environmental water requirement for rivers of the Miankaleh wetland drainage basin V. Gholami1 · A. Khalili2 · H. Sahour3 · M. R. Khaleghi4 · E. Nikzad Tehrani5 Received: 21 June 2020 / Accepted: 19 October 2020 / Published online: 2 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The Miankaleh wetland, one of the richest ecosystems in the north of Iran, has experienced an unprecedented environmental degradation caused by overexploitation of the water resources and climatic changes in recent years. This research aims to estimate the environmental water requirement (EWR) for the rivers that drain into the wetland. For this purpose, comprehensive data were collected through physiographic, climatic, hydrologic, ecologic, and field studies of the wetland and its drainage basin. To estimate the EWR, we applied several methods including the Tenant, the Eco-deficit, the flow duration curve, the Wetted-Perimeter method, and the physical habitat simulation model (PHABSIM) and the results were evaluated based on the natural discharge of the rivers before retrogression of the Miankaleh wetland. Further, the results showed that the consideration should be given to the Wetted-Perimeter and the PHABSIM Model for estimation of the EWR for the rivers of the Miankaleh wetland given the seasonality of the rivers and hydroclimatic condition of the study area. The mean annual EWR of the rivers was estimated between 0.12 and 2.03 m 3/s, which is close to the values of the bank full flows. The current discharge of the rivers are less than the estimated EWR, showing the discharge rates do not meet the water requirement for aquatic species of the Miankaleh wetland Keywords Wetland restoration · Environmental water requirement · The wetted-perimeter method · PHABSIM model
Introduction Wetland, as a unique hydrologic feature of a landscape (US EPA 2008), is one of the most vulnerable aquatic ecosystems due to their seasonal fluctuations in water depth (Krasnostein and Oldham 2004; Kate et al. 2020). These ecosystems, * V. Gholami [email protected] 1
Department of Range and Watershed Management and Department of Water Engineering and Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Guilan, Sowmeh Sara, Guilan, Iran
2
Department of Water Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran
3
Marine Science Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, Port Aransas, TX 78373, USA
4
Department of Range and Watershed Management, Torbat‑e‑Jam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Torbat‑e‑Jam, Iran
5
Department of Range and Watershed Management, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Mazandaran, Sari, Iran
which are managed as part of the regulated water systems, often require external water supplies to support their desired ecological role in the hydrosphere (Jia and Luo 2009). Wetlands act as a passing zone between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and therefore contain characteristics of both environments (US EPA 2008). Three hydrologic descriptors ar
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