Lake Urmia: A Hypersaline Waterbody in a Drying Climate

Author Biography

Peygham Ghaffari has a Ph.D. in Dynamical Oceanography from Oslo University and is a senior researcher at the Norwegian research company Akvaplan-niva. He has 20 years of experience in developing, managing, and conducting local, regional, and international research and capacity-building projects. His primary scientific focus is on mass/energy transport and dispersion of physical, chemical, and biological components and attributed environmental impacts, particularly in the marginal and inland seas. His work includes project development and implementation of advanced scientific models and simulations serving oil and gas, petrochemical, deep-sea mining, as well as emerging green platform industries. He is an inland waterbody and marginal seas expert, e.g., the Caspian Sea. Evgeniy Yakushev has worked as a senior researcher in the Section for Oceanography of the Norwegian Institute for Water Research since 2007. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1979 and received a Ph.D. degree in oceanography and a Doctor of Sciences degree in oceanography in 2002. He has a long experience in chemical oceanography and biogeochemical modeling. This work includes implementing field and modeling techniques for investigations of biogeochemical cycles, and chemical and biological processes that affect nutrients (C, N, O, P, S), with special emphasis on oxygen deficiency in the aquatic environment. During the last few years, he has worked on projects connected with ocean acidification, lake salinization, water contamination with heavy metals, organic pollutants, fish farm wastes, microplastics, and marine litter. He also studied the climate change effects on the Arctic Ocean biogeochemistry.