On the Red Coloration of Urmia Lake

8/6/2019 On the Red Coloration of Urmia Lake

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On the red coloration of Lake Urmia (Northwest Iran)

Urmia City

Urmia or (Turkish Language: اورمو,اورھیم , Urmu, Orumiyeh, Urmiye, Urmiya) is a city in

Northwestern South Azerbaijan (Iranian Azerbaijan) and the capital of West AzerbaijanProvince. The city lies on an altitude of 1,330 m above sea level on the Shahar Chaye

river (City River). Urmia is the 10th populated city in iran and 2nd of Azerbaijanian Turks

provinces after Tabriz. Urmia is the trade center for a fertile agricultural region where

fruit (Specially Apple and Grape) and Tobacco are grown. An important town by the 9th

cent.

The name Urmia or Urmu is thought to have come from Sumerian tongue, the earliest

known civilization in the world located in southern Mesopotamia. Ur was a principle

Sumerian city. Urmia, situated by a lake and surrounded by rivers, would be the cradle

of water. The population of Urmia is predominantly Azerbaijanian Turks (over 90%), butwith Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian minorities.

Lake Urmia

Lake Urmia (Turkish Language: گولواورموگولو،اورھیم ,Urmu Gölü, Urmiye Gölü,farsi ; دیرھچا اروھیم Daryâcheh-ye Orumiyeh; is a salt lake in northwestern Iran, near Iran's border with

Turkey. The lake is between the Iranian provinces of East Azerbaijan and West

Azerbaijan, west of the southern portion of the similarly shaped Caspian Sea. It is the

largest lake in the Middle East,[3] and the third largest salt water lake on earth, with a



surface area of approximately 5,200 km² (2,000 mile²), 140 km (87 miles) length, 55 km

(34 miles) width, and 16 m (52 ft) depth.

Ecology

Lake Urmia (Orumieh in farsi), which lies in northwestern Iran, is home to some 212

species of birds, 41 reptiles, 7 amphibians, and 27 species of mammals, including the

Iranian yellow deer.

The construction of a dam on part of the lake and the recent draught has significantly

decreased the annual amount of water Urmia receives. This in turn has increased the

salinity of Urmiye 's water, causing the lake to lose its significance as home to

thousands of migratory birds, such as flamingoes.

The lake is marked by more than a hundred small rocky islands, which are stopover

points in the migrations of various kinds of wild bird life (including flamingos, pelicans,

spoonbills, ibises, storks, shelducks, avocets, stilts, and gulls).

By virtue of its high levels of salinity, the lake does not sustain any fish species.

Nonetheless, Lake Urmia is considered to be one of the largest natural habitats of

Artemia, which serve as food source for the migratory birds such flamingos. Most of the

area of the lake is considered a national park.

The lake is a major barrier between two of the most important cities in West Azerbaijan

and East Azerbaijan provinces, Urmia and Tabriz. A project to build a highway acrossthe lake was initiated in the 1970s but was abandoned after the Iranian Revolution of

1979, having finished a 15 km causeway with an unbridged gap. The project was

revived in the early 2000s, and was completed in November 2008 with the opening of a

1.5 km bridge across the remaining gap. However, the high saline environment is

already heavily rusting the steel on the bridge despite anti-corrosion treatment. Experts

have warned that the construction of the bridge, together with a series of ecological

factors, will eventually lead to the drying up of the lake, turning it into a salt marsh which

will directly affect the climate of the region. Lake Urmia has been shrinking for a long

time, with an annual evaporation rate of 0.6m to 1m (24 to 39 inches). The lake's salts

are considered to have medical effects, especially as a cure for rheumatism. Lake Urmia

is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and a Ramsar site.

Islands

Lake Urmia has 102 islands. For a The Turkish names of patterns and morphology of

Islands Lake Urmia of a list of their names, see this link. The second largest island,

Shahi Island, is the burial place of Hulagu Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan and the

sacker of Baghdad.



Basin rivers

Aji Chay

Ghaie River

Alamlou River

Leylan River

Zarrineh River

Simineh River

Gadar River

Mahabad River

Barandouz River

Shahar River

Nazlou River

Rozeh River

Zola River

Fereidun Mohebbi*, Reza Ahmadi, Ali Mohsenpour , Latif Esmaili and Yosefali Asadpour

Iranian Artemia Research Center, Urmia, Iran

In summer 2010, the Urmia Lake water was changed to a pinkish-purple color in several

areas such as two sides of the causeway (Fig 1). To investigate on the reasons of this

color change, we collected water samples for phytoplankton and some physicochemical

parameters analyses from six sampling sites on the both sides of the lake causeway on

August 18th 2010 (Table 1).Phytoplankton samples were immediately fixed

by 4% formaldehyde and preserved in cold,dark conditions for laboratory

analysis.Phytoplankton counting and identification were

made using 5-ml settling chambers with a Nikon TS100 inverted microscope at ×400

magnification by Utermöhl (1958) method.



The phytoplankton population of Urmia lake has mainly composed of a unicellular green

alga namely Dunaliella which included about more than 90% of the whole phytoplankton

density of the lake. Other phytoplanktons such as a few species of diatoms like Nitzschia

and Navicula play only a minor role in phytoplankton composition of the lake (Mohebbi et

al., 2009).

In the present study, Dunaliella yet contained even more abundance than previous

studies in Urmia Lake (e.g. Mohebbi et al.,2009; Shoa hasani 1996) (Table 2). On the

other hand, we observed Dunaliella as two Different morphological varieties differed

from each other by their colors: a green and a red colored Dunaliella which apparently

the latter had higher concentrations of carotenoid pigment than the first. As shown in

table 2,however, there were no significant differences among sampling sites regarding



these two morphological forms density. Therefore, though the increased red

colored(morphological form)Dunaliella density may be attributed to the saturation of the

lake water and other extreme conditions, but it cannot have a basic role in color shift of

the lake. As a matter of fact, although β-carotene derived from Dunaliella may be the

most abundant carotenoid pigment in the hypersaline water, its dense packaging within

granules inside the cells chloroplast greatly decreases its contribution to the overall light

absorbance in the water. As a result, most of the pink-red color of the hypersaline

environments is caused by α-bacterioruberin and other bacterioruberin derivatives

present in the family of Halobacteriaceae(Fernandez-Castillo et al., 1986).

The North Arm of Great Salt Lake, Utah,with salt concentrations above 300 g l-1 shows

similar color changes (Post 1977; Baxter et al. 2005). A railroad causeway built in 1959

divided Great Salt Lake into northern and southern sections,leading to dilution of thesouthern section, and concentration of the northern section to nearly saturating salinity.

The red color is the result of a bloom of extreme halophiles, which can reach 108

cells.ml-1 or greater concentration in the northarm (DasSarma, 2006) (Fig.2).



Solar salt ponds are established all over the world in many tropical and subtropical

regions to produce salts from seawater.The seawater is evaporated by a step by step

process through shallow ponds which have relatively constant salinity, so that each set

of ponds contains particular microbial population which adapted to same salt

concentration. At the last step of evaporation process,the salt oncentration rises to morethan 300 gl-1 in crystallization ponds. In this situation, the main microbial communities

are as planktonic populations which give a pink-reddish color to water (Javor, 1989).

In fact, α-bacterioroberin and its other 50- carbon derivatives present in Archaea from

Halobacteriaceae play the major role in establishing such a pink-reddish color in

crystallization ponds. It can be concluded that a similar mechanism contributed in color

change of brine water both at natural hypersaline waters and at man-made solar salt

ponds. This is a biological process in which Halobacteriaceae with its vast number of

genera and a few recently identified bacteria involved in water color shift in NaCl

saturated water.

Conclusion

Briefly, when water salinity exceeds saturation levels, the density of halophilic bacteria

increases to more than 108 cells.ml-1. Since the bacterioroberin are distributed evenly

on the cell membranes in these prokaryotic cel s, so can absorbe light more efficiently

than pigments of eukaryotic Dunaliella.

Water saturation, as well as high temperatures induces a large growth in the number of

halophilic bacteria in Urmia Lake. The presence of these bacteria in Urmia Lake has



recently been investigated by several authors (e.g. Amoozegar and Zahraei,2007;

Arash Rad, 2000; Asgarani et al., 2006; Bahari et al., 2009 and Rafiee et al., 2007). In

conclusion,the role of prokaryotic halophilic bacteria is more than Dunaliella in red

coloration of saturated water including Urmia Lake.

References

Amoozegar M.A, Zahraei. Sh (2007) Biodiversity of halophilic bacteria producing

extracellular hydrolytic enzymes from Urmia Lake,II International Conference on

Environmental,Industrial and Applied Microbiology,Seville(Spain), 382.

Arash Rad F, (2000) Determination of bacterial flora in the biomass of Artemia from

Urmia Lake,M.Sc. Thesis, Islamic Azad University of Lahijan.

Asgarani E.,Shirzad M.,Soudi M.R. Shahmohammadi H.R. and Falsafi T.(2006) Study

on the resistance of Haloferax Radiotolerans, an extreme halophilic Archa-ebacterium

from Uromia Lake against Ultraviolet (UV) light and60Co Gama-Rays, Journal of

Nuclear Science and Technology, 36: 13-18.

Bahari S, Zarrini Gh, Aein F, Zadeh Hosseingholi E (2009) Isolation and identification of

halophilic archaea from salt crystals of Urmia Lake, 10th Iranian Congress of

Microbiology,Ilam, Iran 229.

Baxter, B.K., C.D. Litchfield, K. Sowers, J.D. Griffith, P. Arora DasSarma &

S.DasSarma. 2005. Microbial diversity of Great Salt Lake. In:Gunde-Cimerman, N., A.Oren & A. Plemenita_(eds), Adaptation to Life at High Salt Concentrations in Archaea,

Bacteria, and Eukarya. Springer, Dordrecht: 9 –25.

DasSarma, Sh.(2006). Extreme Halophiles Are Models for Astrobiology. Microbe,

Volume 1,Number .3

Fernandez-Castillo R,Rodriguez-Valera F,Gonzalez-Ramos J, Ruiz Berraquero F (1986)

Accumulation of poly-β-hydroxybutyrate) by halobacteria. Appl Environ Microbiol

51:214 –216

Javor, B., (1989), Hypersaline Environments.Microbiology and Biogeochemistry,

Springer-Verlag, Berlin

Mohebbi, F., Esmaili, L.,Negarestan, H.,and Ahmadi,R.(2009).Dynamics of

Phytoplankton population in Urmia Lake: Consequences on Artemia density.

Proceeding of international sympos-ium/workshop on biology and distribution of

Artemia. Urmia, Iran.

Post, F.J. (1977. The microbial ecology of the Great Salt Lake. Microbial Ecology 3:

143 –165.



Rafiee M.R., Sokhansanj A., Yoosefi M.,Naghizadeh M.A. (2007)Identification of Salt-

Inducible Peptide with Putative Kinase Activity in Halophilic Bacterium Virgibbacillus

halodenitrificans, Journal of bioscience and Bioengineering, 104(3): 178-181.

Shoa hasani, A. (1996). The effect of Artemia feeding on the Urmia Lake

phytoplankton population. In M.Sc. thesis. Lahijan Islamic Azad University, pp 62-63.

Utermöhl H (1958). Zur vervollkommnug der quantitativen phytoplankton Methodik. Mitt

int.Verein.Theor.Angew. Limnology and Oceanography,9: 1-38.

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On the Red Coloration of Urmia Lake