Lake Urmia
salt lake in Iran
Lake Urmia is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is located in the Iranian region of Azerbaijan, near the Armenian border and south of the Caspian Sea. At its greatest extent, it was the largest lake in West Asia. It was once the sixth-largest saltwater lake on Earth, with a surface area of approximately 6,000 km2 (2,300 sq mi), a length of 140 km (87 mi), a width of 70 km (43 mi), and a maximum depth of 20 m (66 ft).
By late 2017, the lake had shrunk to 10% of its former size (and 1/60 of water volume in 1998) due to persistent general drought in Iran, but also the damming of the rivers that flow into it, and the pumping of groundwater from the surrounding area. This dry spell was broken in 2019 and the lake began filling up once again, due to both increased rain and water diversion from the Zab River under the Urmia Lake Research Programme. The trend reversed again in early 2020s, and a combination of drought and administrative mismanagement caused a renewed acute drop in water levels. Based on NASA's satellite imagery, the lake had almost entirely dried up by September 2025. After massive rainfall across the Fertile Crescent, along with the mass release of surplus water from dams and dredging of canals, in early 2026, the water level in Lake Urmia rose to its highest in five years.
Lake Urmia, along with its approximately 102 (former) islands, is protected as a national park by the Iranian Department of Environment.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lake Urmia” is salt lake in Iran. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lake, Urmia and salt, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “salt lake in Iran” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q199551. Authority coordinates are 37.662, 45.405. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017, 1998, 2019 and 2025.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Lake Urmia”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Lake Urmia primary sources, Lake Urmia archive and Lake research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Lake Urmia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.