Decline in Iran's groundwater recharge

Roohollah Noori; Mohsen Maghrebi; Søren Jessen; Sayed M Bateni; Essam Heggy; Saman Javadi; Mojtaba Noury; Severin Pistre; Soroush Abolfathi; Amir AghaKouchak

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-42411-2

Decline in Iran's groundwater recharge

Nat Commun. 2023 Oct 21;14(1):6674. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-42411-2.

Authors

Roohollah Noori^{1

2}, Mohsen Maghrebi³, Søren Jessen⁴, Sayed M Bateni⁵, Essam Heggy^{6

7}, Saman Javadi⁸, Mojtaba Noury⁹, Severin Pistre¹⁰, Soroush Abolfathi¹¹, Amir AghaKouchak^{12

13

14}

Affiliations

¹ Graduate Faculty of Environment, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. noor@ut.ac.ir.
² Faculty of Governance, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. noor@ut.ac.ir.
³ Graduate Faculty of Environment, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
⁴ Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁵ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Water Resources Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA.
⁶ Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁷ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
⁸ Department of Water Engineering, College of Abouraihan, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
⁹ Iran Water Resources Management Company, Ministry of Energy, Tehran, Iran.
¹⁰ HydroSciences Montpellier, University of Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, Montpellier, France.
¹¹ School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
¹² Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, USA.
¹³ Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, USA.
¹⁴ Institute for Water, Environment and Health, United Nations University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.

Abstract

Groundwater recharge feeds aquifers supplying fresh-water to a population over 80 million in Iran-a global hotspot for groundwater depletion. Using an extended database comprising abstractions from over one million groundwater wells, springs, and qanats, from 2002 to 2017, here we show a significant decline of around -3.8 mm/yr in the nationwide groundwater recharge. This decline is primarily attributed to unsustainable water and environmental resources management, exacerbated by decadal changes in climatic conditions. However, it is important to note that the former's contribution outweighs the latter. Our results show the average annual amount of nationwide groundwater recharge (i.e., ~40 mm/yr) is more than the reported average annual runoff in Iran (i.e., ~32 mm/yr), suggesting the surface water is the main contributor to groundwater recharge. Such a decline in groundwater recharge could further exacerbate the already dire aquifer depletion situation in Iran, with devastating consequences for the country's natural environment and socio-economic development.