Trend and abrupt change analysis in water quality of Urmia Lake in comparison with changes in lake water level.

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.