Realizing the Dynamic of Water Scarcity, Land-Use Change and Environmental Degradation in Roodasht, Iran

The Zayandeh Rud in central Iran is one of the country’s most important rivers, providing water for more than 4.5 million inhabitants. Originating in the Zāgros Mountains, the river passes through big agricultural areas, large-scale industrial sites and the city of Isfahan, before it ends in the Gavkhuni wetland, an area listed by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. The special geostrategic location of the Zayandeh Rud basin has been the driving force for socio-economic development with flourishing urban growth, a thriving industrial development and expanding agricultural areas. During the past decades, agricultural areas have been expanded by upgrading the water infrastructure and by modernizing the irrigation methods. Besides, big water intensive industries have been established in the basin. Along with increasing irrigation and industrial consumption, the demand for drinking water has increased dramatically. These parallel developments have led to an extraordinary increase of water users and water demand in the basin, backed by the distribution of legal water entitlements of the government challenging historic water distribution rationale (Raber et al. 2018).