TEHRAN – A selection of short stories written by 14 Iranian authors about Lake Urmia has been published in a collection named “The Bride of the Sea”.

The two-volume collection suitable for young adults above 15 has been published by the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA).
 
The book carries stories by Mohammad-Kazem Akhavan, Mohammadreza Yusefi, Azam Mahdavi, Abbas Jahangirian, Zahra Abdi, Mostafa Kharaman, Ezzatollah Alvandi and several other writers.

The stories have been illustrated Shima Zarei, Maral Dehqani, Reza Maktabi, Maryam Tabatabai and Samaneh Salavati. 

Lake Urmia, located in the northwest of Iran, was once the most extensive permanent hypersaline lake in the world. Unsustainable water management in response to increasing demand together with climatic extremes has given rise to the lake’s depletion during the last two decades. The lake’s restoration program was established in 2013 and aims to restore the lake within a 10-year period.

At the beginning of the Lake Urmia Restoration Program in 2013, the Lake’s level was about 1270.32 meters, 1783 square kilometers in surface area and 1.14 billion cubic meters in volume, which, when compared to the current water level, indicates that a 50 percent increase in the lake’s surface area has been realized.

Achieving sustainable rehabilitation requires countless efforts, such as preventing the lake’s water flow from entering agricultural land. Lake Urmia’s condition stabilized with a positive trend due to heavy rainfall, but there is a fear that this trend will be reversed by drought in the coming years.

The above normal levels of rain came to help conservation measures to preserve Lake Urmia, however, it still needs 9.5 billion cubic meters of water to reach its ecological level of 1274.10 meters.

Some 108 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are working in the three fields of environment, sustainable livelihood development and surface water control with the aim of revitalizing Lake Urmia.

Photo: Front covers of the collection “The Bride of the Sea” published by the IIDCYA.

RM/MMS/YAW