Iran's Lake Urmia was once the second-largest saltwater lake in the world, covering more than 2,000 square miles at its deepest in the 1990s. In the past two decades, the lake has dried out ...

Revered by ethnic Azeris as “the turquoise solitaire of Azerbaijan,” Lake Urmia was second only to the Caspian Sea as the largest saltwater lake in the Middle East, a haven for birds and bathers.

Over the past two decades, Lake Urmia, in northwestern Iran, has shrunk by nearly 95 percent, destroying the once-booming tourism and fishing industries and the habitat of local fauna, including ...

Like the famous Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and the Salton Sea in California, the salty expanse of Lake Urmia in Iran has been drying up and shrinking for decades. Now the lake ...

An Iranian woman in the city of Urmia on April 5, 2018. With the gradual drying up of Lake Urmia and ... More the lack of tourists, the Iranian city fears for its future (Photo: Farshid-Motahari ...

The Lake’s level has also decreased by 68 centimeters, reaching 1,270.74 centimeters. Lake Urmia’s ecological level is 1,274.10 centimeters. Meanwhile, the volume of water in the Lake stands at 3.02 ...