ENVIRONMENTAL AFTERMATH FROM THE DRYING PROCESSES OF AL-HUWAIZA MARSHLAND, IRAQ

Abstract

Al-Huwaiza marsh shows environmental and economic significance, but it has been exposed to the drying processes and then to the drowning processes. It has witnessed great decrease in the water resources specified for the country and the decrease in the water portion feeding it. A fact which shows negative effects on its area, for the change of the environmental variables, has affected the process of nurturing the marsh - only 33.4% of the area of the marsh has been drowned during the 1990s. As a result, its environmental features have been deteriorated, which have negatively affected the kind of water contained in it and which require a series of procedures and solutions to be done in this regard. Among these there are the following: encouraging the dialogue and negotiations with the countries in which the high basins of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates are located (Turkey, Syria and Iran), controlling the random spread of the marshes and concentrating on the constant and deep marshes, developing and rehabilitating the deep marshes by means of establishing natural protected areas, enlivening the constant marshes by means of connecting them to one another, supporting and encouraging studies and research, controlling the pollution of the marshes, developing the general services of the marsh areas and the neighboring ones, and stronger involving of the ministries which should pay their serious and actual attention to the environment and the population of the marshes.

Keywords

• drying processes
• environmental
• biological system
• marshland