Lake Urmia

Lake Urmia;
az, اۇرمۇ گؤلۆ, script=Arab, italic=no, Urmu gölü;
ku, گۆلائوو رمیەیێ, Gola Ûrmiyeyê;
hy, Ուրմիա լիճ, Urmia lich;
arc, ܝܡܬܐ ܕܐܘܪܡܝܐ is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is located between the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan in Iran, and west of the southern portion of the Caspian Sea. At its greatest extent, it was the largest lake in the Middle East and the sixth-largest saltwater lake on Earth, with a surface area of approximately , a length of , a width of , and a maximum depth of .

By late 2017, the lake had shrunk to 10% of its former size (and 1/60 of water volume in 1998) due to persistent general drought in Iran, but also the damming of the local rivers that flow into it, and the pumping of groundwater from the surrounding area. This dry spell was broken in 2019 and the lake is now filling up once again, due to both increased rain and water diversion from the Zab River by the Lake Urmia Restoration Program.

Lake Urmia, along with its approximately 102 (former) islands, is protected as a national park by the Iranian Department of Environment.

Names and etymologies

Richard Nelson Frye suggested an Urartian origin for the name while T. Burrow connected the origin of the name Urmia to Indo-Iranian ''urmi-'' "wave" and ''urmya-'' "undulating, wavy". A more likely etymology would be from Neo-Aramaic Assyrian- Chaldean spoken by the shrinking number of the ancient Christian population of the nearby city of Urmia, consisting of ''ur'' meaning "city," and ''mia'' meaning "water." Together, the "water city", what Urmia city is: a city on the waters of the eponymous lake.

Locally, the lake is referred to in Persian as ''Daryâče-ye Orumiye'' (دریاچهٔ ارومیه), in Azerbaijani as ''Urmu gölü'' (اۇرمۇ گؤلۆ), and in Kurdish as ''Deryaçeya Wirmê''. The traditional Armenian name is ''Kaputan tsov'' (Կապուտան ծով), literally "blue sea". Residents of Shahi Island refer to the lake in Azerbaijani as ''Daryā'' (دریا) meaning Sea.

Its Old Persian name was ''Chichast'', meaning "glittering", a reference to the glittering mineral particles suspended in the water of the lake and found along its shores. In medieval times it came to be known as Lake Spauta or Lake Kabuda (Kabodan) in Armenian geography, from the word for "azure" in Persian, or ''kapuyt'' ('կապույտ') in Armenian.

Archaeology and history

The Lake Urmia region has a wealth of archaeological sites going back to the Neolithic period. Archaeological excavations of the settlements in the area have found artifacts that date from about 7,000 BCE and later.

Excavations at Teppe Hasanlu archeological site southwest of Lake Urmia also revealed habitations going back to the 6th millennium BCE.

A related site is Yanik Tepe, on the east shore of Lake Urmia, that has been excavated in the 1950s and 60s by C. A. Burney.

Another important site in the area, from about the same era, is Hajji Firuz Tepe, where some of the oldest archaeological evidence of grape-based wine was discovered.

Kul Tepe Jolfa is a site in the Jolfa County about 10 km south from the Araxes River. It dates to Chalcolithic period (5000–4500 BCE).

Se Girdan kurgans are located on the south shore of Lake Urmia. Some of them were excavated in 1968 and 1970 by O. Muscarella. They have now been redated to the second half of the 4th millennium, although originally they were thought to be much younger.

One of the early mentions of Lake Urmia is from Assyrian records of the 9th century BCE. There, in the records from the reign of Shalmaneser III (858–824 BCE), two names are mentioned in the area of Lake Urmia: ''Parsuwaš'' (i.e. the Persians) and ''Matai'' (i.e. the Mitanni). It is not completely clear whether these referred to places or tribes, or what their relationship was to the subsequent list of personal names and "kings". But the Matai were Medes and linguistically the name ''Parsuwaš'' matches the Old Persian word ''pārsa'', an Achaemenid ethnolinguistic designation.cf. Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006), "Iran, vi(1). Earliest Evidence", Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. 13

The lake was the center of the Mannaean Kingdom. A potential Mannaean settlement, represented by the ruin mound of Hasanlu, was on the south side of the lake. Mannae was overrun by the Matiani or Matieni, an Iranian people variously identified as Scythian, Saka, Sarmatian, or Cimmerian. It is not clear whether the lake took its name from the people or the people from the lake, but the country came to be called Matiene or Matiane, and gave the lake its Latin name.

The Battle of Urmia was fought near the lake in 1604, during the Ottoman–Safavid War of 1603–1618.

In the last five hundred years the area around Lake Urmia has been home to Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Iranians, Assyrians, and Armenians.

Chemistry

The main cations in the lake water include Na⁺, K⁺, Ca²⁺, Li⁺ and Mg²⁺, while Cl⁻, SO, HCO are the main anions. The Na⁺ and Cl⁻ concentration is roughly four times the concentration of natural seawater. Sodium ions are at slightly higher concentration in the south compared to the north of the lake, which could result from the shallower depth in the south, and a higher net evaporation rate.

The lake is divided into north and south, separated by the Urmia Lake Bridge and its associated causeway, which was completed in 2008. The bridge provides only a gap in the embankment, allowing little exchange of water between the two sections. Due to drought and increased demands for agricultural water in the lake's basin, the salinity of the lake has risen to more than 300 g/L during recent years, and large areas of the lake bed have been desiccated.

Ecology

Palaeoecology

A palynological investigation on long cores from Urmia Lake has revealed a nearly 200 kyr record of vegetation and lake level changes. The vegetation has changed from the ''Artemisia''/grass steppes during the glacial/ stadial periods, to oak-juniper steppe-forests during the interglacial/interstadial periods. The lake has had a complex hydrological history and its water levels have fluctuated greatly in geological history. Very high lake levels have been suggested for some time intervals during the two last glacial periods, as well as during both the Last Interglacial as well as the Holocene. The lowest lake levels have occurred during the last glacial periods.

Modern ecology

Based on the latest checklists of biodiversity at Lake Urmia in 2014 and 2016, it is home of 62 species of archaebacteria and bacteria, 42 species of microfungi, 20 species of phytoplankton, 311 species of plants, five species of mollusca, 226 species of birds, 27 species of amphibians and reptiles and 24 species of mammals (47 fossils have been recorded in the area).

Lake Urmia is an internationally registered protected area as both a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and a Ramsar site