Water or mirage? Nightmare over dams and hydropower across Iran

ABSTRACT

This study examines the influence of human activities and climate variability on 86 dams and hydropower across Iran. The term ‘mirage water’ is introduced to estimate the impact of these factors on inflow. Data analysis shows that out of 1729 m³s⁻¹ of mirage water, 705 m³s⁻¹ are contributed by anthropogenic activities and 1024 m³s⁻¹ by precipitation deficits. This indicates that some parts of Iran’s strategic investments in water resources management over the past 60 years have failed. The study underscores the necessity for enhanced management practices and infrastructure investments to ensure sustainable water resources in arid and semi-arid regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Water bankruptcy
• reservoir operation failure
• climate change
• mirage water
• anthropogenic driver

Author contributions

ATH: research conceptualization and methodology, supervision, writing the original draft, and review- ing and editing; MM: research conceptualization and methodology, supervision, and reviewing and editing, data curation; SA: research conceptualization, literature review, reviewing and editing, analysis, geographical information system (GIS) work, data curation; SG: literature review, reviewing, editing, analysis, geographical information system (GIS) work; RN: research conceptualization and methodology, data curation, reviewing and editing; MO: supervision, reviewing and editing; MN: data curation, reviewing and editing; ARG: conceptualization and methodology and reviewing and editing, data curation; AAH: reviewing and editing, analyses, and data curation; BK: research conceptualization and methodology, supervision, reviewing, and editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

The main analysed data for this work are annual flow and precipitation data (for the number of stations, see Table A1 in the supplemental data online). This data were acquired (on 20 May 2020) from http://wrs.wrm.ir/amar/login.asp, with supporting data regarding dam information (on 20 May 2020) from http://dams.wrm.ir/.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2023.2238844