In pictures: Iran’s dying lake

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  Lake Oroumieh, one of the biggest saltwater lakes on Earth, has shrunk more than 80 per cent to 1,000 square kilometres in the past decade, mainly because of climate change.

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  Salt-covered rocks that were once deep underwater now sit in the middle of desert. Experts fear the lake – famous in years past as a tourist spot and a favourite stopping point for migrating flamingos, pelicans and gulls — could disappear within two years if nothing is done.

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  Less than a decade ago, Mozafar Cheragh hosted dozens of tourists a day, with his two sons taking them on boat tours. His children have since left to pursue work elsewhere.

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  “I sold a dozen boats and kept half a dozen here, hoping the water will return,” he said. “But it didn’t happen.”

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  Rescuing the lake in north-western Iran, near the Turkish border, was one of Mr Rouhani’s campaign promises, and his new cabinet promptly decided to form a team to invite scholars to help find solutions.

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  Reza, an Iranian gardener, sits on a dry tree near Lake Oroumieh. The president is putting an emphasis on tackling long-neglected environmental problems critics say were made worse by his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. An engineer with an appetite for giant populist projects, Mr Ahmadinejad pursued policies that led to the expansion of irrigation projects and construction of dams.

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  An abandoned ship sits stuck in a dock on the lake.

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  Twenty proposals are on the table for saving the lake, including cloud-seeding to increase rainfall in the area and the building of pipelines to bring in more water.

The first cabinet decision made under Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, wasn’t about how to resolve his country’s nuclear dispute with world powers. It was about how to keep the nation’s largest lake from disappearing. Lake Oroumieh, one of the biggest saltwater lakes on Earth, has shrunk more than 80 per cent in the last decade. Photos by Ebrahim Noroozi / AP Photo