Abstract
Urmia Lake, as the largest lake in Iran borders, has a special role in the ecosystem of the region. The water level in this lake declines in recent year remarkably, so monitoring the lake water quality is important from an environmental view. In this research, the changes in the qualitative variables of the lake water (including electrical conductivity (EC), pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), and sodium adsorption ratio (SAR)) are compared with the changes in the lake’s water level based on the Mann-Kendall nonparametric test. Further, abrupt change points in the time series of quality variables were detected by the Pettitt test. Studies were carried out on samples collected from five different stations during 2005–2015. The results showed that the water level of Urmia Lake had a significant decreasing trend and also, except for TDS, the other investigated quality variables had negative trends during the studied period. It was observed that in general, the values of the Z statistic in the stations located in the eastern part of the lake were more than the stations located in the western part, and also the stations located in the northern parts had a higher trend than those in the south of the bridge.



Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
References
Abbaspour, M., & Nazaridoust, A. (2007). Determination of environmental water requirements of lake Urmia, Iran: an ecological approach. International Journal of Environmental Studies, 64(2), 161–169.
Abdi, A., Hassanzadeh, Y., Talatahari, S., Fakheri-Fard, A., & Mirabbasi, R. (2017). Regional drought frequency analysis using L-moments and adjusted charged system search. Journal of Hydroinformatics, 19(3), 426–442. https://doi.org/10.2166/hydro.2016.228.
Ahmadi, F., Nazeri Tahroudi, M., Mirabbasi, R., Khalili, K., & Jhajharia, D. (2018). Spatiotemporal trend and abrupt change analysis of temperature in Iran. Meteorological Applications., 25(2), 314–321. https://doi.org/10.1002/met.1694.
Albek, E. (2002). Statistical analysis of water quality trends: an application to the Porsuk Stream. Anadolu University Journal of Science and Technology, 3(2), 281–292.
Chaudhari, S., Felfelani, F., Shin, S., & Pokhrel, Y. (2018). Climate and anthropogenic contributions to the desiccation of the second largest saline lake in the twentieth century. Journal of Hydrology, 560, 342–353.
Daneshvar, F., & Dinpashoh, Y. (2013). Trends of groundwater quality of Ardabil plain using the Spearman method. Journal of Environmental Studies, 38(4), 17–28.
Daraine, A. B., Ghasemi, M., Karimi, F., & Hatami, S. (2019). Urmia Lake desiccation and the signs of local climate changes. Journal of Hydraulic Structures, 5(2), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.22055/jhs.2019.30414.1116.
Dehghani, R., & Kaki, M. (2014). Analysis of the trends of groundwater quality changes by using the spearman test in Mazndaran plain, northern Iran. International Bulletin of Water Resources and Development, 1(3), 112–121.
Dinpashoh, Y., & Babamiri, O. (2020). Trends in reference crop evapotranspiration in Urmia Lake basin. Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 13, 372. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-020-05404-9.
Fathian, F., Dehghan, Z., Bazrkar, M. H., & Eslamian, S. (2016). Trends in hydrological and climatic variables affected by four variations of the Mann-Kendall approach in Urmia Lake basin, Iran. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 61(5), 892–904. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2014.932911.
Gajbhiye Meshram, S., Kahya, E., Meshram, C., Ghorbani, M. A., Ambade, B., & Mirabbasi, R. (2020). Long-term temperature trend analysis associated with agriculture crops. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 140, 1139–1159.
Hamed, K. H., & Rao, A. R. (1998). A modified Mann–Kendall trend test for autocorrelated data. Journal of Hydrology, 204, 182–196.
Hatami Majoumerd, S., Borhani Dariane, A. (2015). Temperature trend analysis in Urmia Lake basin compared with water level fluctuations of the Lake. International Conference on Chemical, Civil and Environmental Engineering (CCEE-2015) June 5-6, 2015 Istanbul (Turkey).
Kalayci, S., & Kahya, E. (1998). Detection of water quality trends in the rivers of the Susurluk Basin. Turkish Journal of Engineering and Environmental Science, 22, 503–514.
Kendall, M. G. (1975). Rank correlation measures. London: Charles Griffin.
Khanmohammadi, N., Rezaie, H., Montaseri, M., & Behmanesh, J. (2017). The effect of different meteorological parameters on the temporal variations of reference evapotranspiration. Environmental Earth Sciences, 76, 540. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-017-6871-7.
Khazaei, B., Khatami, S., Alemohammad, S. H., Rashidi, L., Wu, C., Madani, K., Kalantari, Z., Destouni, G., & Aghakouchak, A. (2019). Climatic or regionally induced by humans? Tracing hydro-climatic and land-use changes to better understand the Lake Urmia tragedy. Journal of Hydrology, 569, 203–217.
Kiro, Y., Goldstein, S. L., Garcia-Veigas, J., Levy, E., Kushnir, Y., Stein, M., & Lazar, B. (2017). Relationships between lake-level changes and water and salt budgets in the Dead Sea during extreme aridities in the Eastern Mediterranean. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 464, 211–226.
Kisi, O., & Ay, M. (2014). Comparison of Mann–Kendall and innovative trend method for water quality parameters of the Kizilirmak River, Turkey. Journal of Hydrology, 513, 362–375.
Kumar, S., Merwade, V., Kam, J., & Thurner, K. (2009). Stream flow trends in Indiana: effects of long term persistence, precipitation and subsurface drains. Journal of Hydrology, 374(1–2), 171–183.
Kundzewicz, Z. W., Robson, A. J., (2000). Detecting trend and other changes in hydrological data. World Climate Program-Data and Monitoring, Geneva, 158.
Lensky, N. G., Dvorkin, Y., Lyakhovsky, V., Gertman, I., & Gavrieli, I. (2005). Water, salt, and energy balances of the Dead Sea. Water Resources Research, 41(12).
Mann, H. B. (1945) Non-parametric tests against trend. Econometrica, 13, MathSci Net, pp. 245–259.
Mirabbasi, R., & Dinpashoh, Y. (2010). Trend analysis of streamflow across the north west of Iran in recent three decades. Journal of Water and Soil, 24(4), 757–768.
Mirabbasi, R. and Eslamian, S., (2010). Delineation of groundwater quality concerning applicability of pressure irrigation system in Sirjan watershed, Iran, International Conference on Management of Soil and Groundwater Salinization in Arid Regions, 11–14 January 2010, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman.
Nourani, V., Danandeh Mehr, A., & Azad, N. (2018). Trend analysis of hydroclimatological variables in Urmia lake basin using hybrid wavelet Mann–Kendall and Şen tests. Environmental Earth Sciences, 77(207). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-018-7390-x.
Nouri, H., Mason, R. J., & Moradi, N. (2017). Land suitability evaluation for changing spatial organization in Urmia County towards conservation of Urmia Lake. Journal of Applied Geography, 81, 1–12.
Pettitt, A. N. (1979). A non-parametric approach to the change-point problem. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics), 28(2), 126–135.
Saghebian, S. M., Sattari, M. T., Mirabbasi, R., & Pal, M. (2014). Ground water quality classification by decision tree method in Ardebil region, Iran. Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 7(11), 4767–4777. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-013-1042-y.
Salarijazi, M., Akhond-Ali, A., Adib, A., & Daneshkhah, A. (2012). Trend and change-point detection for the annual stream-flow series of the Karun River at the Ahvaz hydrometric station. African Journal of Agricultural Research., 7(32), 4540–4552.
Sanikhani, H., Kisi, O., Mirabbasi, R., & Gajbhiye Meshram, S. (2018). Trend analysis of rainfall pattern over the Central India during 1901–2010. Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 11, –437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-018-3800-3 (IF=0.86).
Sattari, M. T., Mirabbasi, R., Sushab, R. S., & Abraham, J. (2018). Prediction of groundwater level in Ardebil plain using support vector regression and M5 tree model. Groundwater, 56(4), 636–646. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwat.12620.
Sattari, M. T., Sureh, F. S., Kahya, E. (2020). Monthly precipitation assessments in association with atmospheric circulation indices by using tree-based models. Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-03946-5.
Sen, P. K. (1968). Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall’s tau. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 63(324), 1379–1389.
Verstraeten, G., Poesen, J., Demarée, G., & Salles, C. (2006). Long-term (105 years) variability in rain erosivity as derived from 10-min rainfall depth data for Ukkel (Brussels, Belgium): Implications for assessing soil erosion rates. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 111(D22).
Villarini, G., Smith, J. A., Serinaldi, F., & Ntelekos, A. A. (2011). Analyses of seasonal and annual maximum daily discharge records for central Europe. Journal of Hydrology, 399(3–4), 299–312.
Yarahmadi, D. (2014). Hydroclimatology analysis of water level fluctuations in Urmia Lake. Physical Geography Research Quarterly, 46(1), 77–92.
Yue, S., Pilon, P., & Cavadias, G. (2002). Power of the Mann–Kendall and Spearman’s rho tests for detecting monotonic trends in hydrological series. Journal of Hydrology, 259(1–4), 254–271.
Zamani, R., Mirabbasi, R., Abdollahi, S., & Jhajharia, D. (2017). Streamflow trend analysis by considering autocorrelation structure, long-term persistence, and Hurst coefficient in a semi-arid region of Iran. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 129(1-2), 33–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1747-4.
Web references
URL1: https://earth.google.com/web/@37.62791852,45.92562862,1699.93180183a,242930.43394033d,35y,-0h,0t,0r
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sattari, M.T., Mirabbasi, R., Jarhan, S. et al. Trend and abrupt change analysis in water quality of Urmia Lake in comparison with changes in lake water level. Environ Monit Assess 192, 623 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08577-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08577-8