THE STALLED RECOVERY OF THE MESOPTAMIAN MARSHES

The Mesoptamian Marshes, an extensive wetlands system in Iraq which once covered roughly twice the area of the Florida Everglades, has been heavily impacted by both human and climate forces over the past decades. In the period leading up to the Second Gulf War in 2002, the marshlands were shrinking due to both a policy of draining and water diversion, and construction of dams upstream on the Euphrates in Turkey. Following the war through 2006, this trend was reversed as the diversions were removed and active draining stopped. The recovery reached its peak in 2006, but the marshes have been drying since, due to droughts and increased water storage upstream.

A combination of MODIS, Landsat and GRACE datasets were used to determine if the change in water storage both in above ground and total storage both upriver in the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds, and in the Marshlands. This change in total water storage is used to help partition the changes between upstream retention and overall drying of the system. The Grace datasets show a gradual decrease in total water in the source water regions for the Euphrates over the period of 2002-2010, and a sharp change from increasing water surface area and mass to losing in the lower portion of the watershed containing the marshes in 2006. This suggests that the dam removal and decrease in pumping only provided a temporary respite for the marshlands and that their future is tied more strongly to any climate changes that will affect recharge in the upper Tigris-Euphrates system.