Manifestation of Remotely Sensed Data Coupled With Field Measured Meteorological Data for an Assessment of Degradation of Urmia Lake, Iran Keivan Kabiri 1,2,a,* , Biswajeet Pradhan 1,b , Arash Sharifi 3,c , Yasser Ghobadi 1,d , Saeid Pirasteh 4,e 1 Institute of Advanced Technology (ITMA), Spatial & Numerical Modelling Laboratory, University Putra Malaysia (UPM), 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 2 Iranian National Institute for Oceanography (INIO), No. 3, Etemadzadeh St., Fatemi Ave., Tehran, Iran 3 Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University Miami, FL 33149-109, USA 4 University Bouelvard, Islamic Azad University, Dezful Branch, Iran a kabiri@inio.ac.ir, b biswajeet24@gmail.com, c osharifi@rsmas.miami.edu, d ghobadi_y@yahoo.com, e moshaver1380@gmail.com *Keivan Kabiri Keywords: Remote Sensing; Landsat; NOAA Pathfinder; Urmia Lake; Meteorological data; Iran Abstract. Urmia Lake, located in northwest of Iran, is the world second largest salt lake which is going through very sever degradation, especially during the past 15 years. Remotely sensed data such as Landsat satellite imagery and Sea Surface Temperature (SST) values extracted from NOAA-Pathfinder were employed to assess degradation of the Urmia during 1984 to 2011. Furthermore, meteorological data obtained from two synoptic stations around the lake were utilized to study precipitation and air temperature variation during the 27 years time period. Results indicate that the effective area of lake shrunk from 6059 km 2 to 2323 km 2 from 1995 to 2011 which corresponds to 9 meters drop in lake elevation within the past 16 years. Further results revealed that the significant reason of this phenomenon should be more anthropogenic and less environmental since the degradation is accelerated after year 2000 while the meteorological parameters such as precipitation and weather temperature at this decade were in normal situation and could not have such a huge effect stand alone on the amount of water of lake. 1. Introduction Urmia is the world's second largest saline body which is located in northwest of Iran and is an important asset for the region because it acts as a mediator of extreme climate, which is bitterly felt in other nearby basins. Although the lake itself does not support a diverse form of life due to its high salinity but its surrounding area as well as its islands are home to various fauna and flora [1,2]. Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia are the neighboring countries which potentially are affected by any changes on Urmia Lake environmental condition. During the past decade, several researches tried to study and monitor the Urmia Lake environmental changes and understand what causes these changes from different perspectives, from geology to meteorology and from biology to economics. While Toloui, 1996 [1]; Sharifi et al. 2002 [3] and Alipour 2006 [4] noted the controlling role of water discharged into the lake on water salinity, Eimanfar and Mohebbi, (2007) found an intensive increasing in salinity of lake during recent years [5]. In first decade of 21 st 2012 Asia Pacific Conference on Environmental Science and Technology Advances in Biomedical Engineering, Vol.6 978-1-61275-003-3 /10/$25.00 ©2012 IERI APEST2012 395