Lake Sevan Part II

Friday, February 11, 2011 | By Patrick Welz
Lake Sevan Part II
The Flora and Fauna of Lake Sevan

While many people focus Armenia's location at the crossroads of European, Turkish, Arab, and Russian cultures, natural scientists are far more interested in how Armenia's location has been influenced by neighboring ecosystems. And since Lake Sevan is one of the single largest and most influential natural bodies in Armenia, it is a great starting point to investigate this natural overlapping.

The first thing scientists realized about the Lake Sevan area is the different natural zones. One can find characteristics of deciduous forests, alpine meadows, semi-arid steppe, and now because of the Soviet plan for Lake Sevan, artificial evergreen forests.i These various ecosystems have led many species of animals and plants to develop and thrive in the Sevan basin. Approximately 1,600 or one half of all the plant species in Armenia can be found near the lake. The Red Data Book of Armenia published in 1988 (The Soviet version of endangered and threatened species lists) includes 386 species of plants, 48 of which can be found in the Sevan basin.ii Also, the Sevan basin includes six native species of plants that evolved there and are considered endemic.iii

In the lake itself, six species of fish have been identified. Two of these species have been listed in the Red Book. One of these species, the ishkhan can be found on the ragged edge of extinction. Unfortunately for the biodiversity of Lake Sevan, ishkhan trout is considered a delicacy in most Armenian house holds and commercial and personal fishing continues.


Armenian Gull
ArmeniaBirding.info
While many plants can be found surrounding the lake, and various types of native fish, birds are the highlight of Lake Sevan. Bird-watching in Armenia is slowly beginning to catch the eyes of international birders and is considered by many to be one of the last diamond in the rough birding locales that is accessible to enthusiasts of all levels. BirdLife International has designated five locations in Armenia as “Important Bird Areas,” one of which is Lake Sevan.iv Because Armenia lies in the migratory path of many European and Russian birds, 350 species of birds have been identified in Armenia, 210 of which can be found in the Sevan area.v Before the drainage of the lake, Sevan was considered to be the greatest inland breeding area for water birds between the Caspian and Black Seas, although now the breeding capacity is greatly diminished.vi











iv The Stone Garden Guide Armenia and Karabagh Second Edition
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Lake Sevan Part I

Thursday, February 3, 2011 | By Patrick Welz
Lake Sevan Part I

Lake Sevan From Space
Wikipedia
Located at an altitude of nearly two thousand meters above sea level, Lake Sevan is one of the largest alpine lakes in the world. As such, it has been considered extremely important throughout Armenian culture, economically and ecologically.

The Soviet Drainage of the Lake

Currently, close to one fifth of all livestock raised in Armenia can be found in the Sevan basin, ninety percent of all the fish caught in the country is caught in Sevan, along with eight percent of the crayfish. Other possible economic benefits caught the interest of Stalin and Soviet engineers which led to the current poor state that the lake is currently in. In 1910, an Armenian engineer by the name of Suqias Manesserian published a book, “The Evaporating Billions and the Stagnation of Russian Capital.” In it, he concluded that due to the amount of evaporation being more than twice as high as the average direct precipitation the level of the lake should be lowered. By reducing the surface area through a drainage system, the water that was being lost to evaporation could be used for power generation and irrigation. His original idea was to drop the water level by fifty meters, leaving a lake of only 240 km² out of the original size of 1,416 km². In the early 1930s, Manesserian's plan was implemented and when the drainage tunnel was completed in 1949, the water level started to drop at the rate of one meter per year. Before the drainage was stopped, the water level had dropped 19.88 meters, a reduction in volume of 44% (58.5 km³ to 32.9 km³), and a shrinking of the surface area by 180 km².i


Sevan Water Level
Lake Sevan: Experience and Lessons Learned Brief

When the water level dropped, engineers not letting a potential money maker go waste, planted many artificial forests. Even today along the Sevan to Vardenis road, one will see many groves of pine trees planted in regular lines bordering the lake. Acacia, willow, and sallow thorn were planted as well. The unfortunate side effect of this planting is that all of these new species are non-native which has disrupted the migratory patterns of birds and much of the wildlife surrounding the lake. One of the most drastic effects has been on the ishkhan, or Sevan trout.ii By affecting the spawning grounds of the ishkhan, human impact on Lake Sevan took a fish that was harvested commercially, with yearly catches of more than 5,000 metric tons up through the 1940s, to an endangered specie. In 1983, the last year ishkhan catches were recorded, the catch had dropped down to a mere 8 metric tons.iii




iii http://www.ilec.or.jp/eg/lbmi/pdf/21_Lake_Sevan_27February2006.pdf
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Metsamor

Saturday, January 29, 2011 | By Patrick Welz
Metsamaor Nuclear Power Plant

Built in the 1970's, the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant is a complex of two old Soviet VVER-440 Model V230 reactors.i Because of the 1988 earthquake (read more about the earthquake here) the plant was closed, but one of the reactors was reopened in 1993. This was done because the plant produces forty percent of the electricity used in Armenia. This coupled with the Azeri and Turkish blockades of Armenia created severe energy shortages that many Armenians call the “dark and cold” years. These years of energy shortages are directly related to the deforestion issue that Armenia is currently grappling with.

Even though the plant is the single largest producer of Armenia's electricity, there are several environmental and social issue that have spelled doom for the plant in it's current incarnation. The first is the location of the plant. Armenia located in a seismically active area which makes any sort of construction difficult. Under pressure from the United States and the European Union, Armenia has agreed to close to reactor. Even if the reactor is not closed down because of the agreement, the plant is planned to be retired in 2016. To aid Armenia in this process, the EU has pledged one hundred million euros to close the plant as soon as possible.ii Second, the EU has classified the VVER-440 reactors to be the “oldest and least reliable” reactors built by the Soviet Union.iii One of the biggest issues the EU has with Metsamor is the lack of safety measures that were built into it to prevent the escape of dangerous radioactive emissions in the event of a catastrophic accident.iv Even now the Turkish government is started to monitor the level of radiation in the state of Anatolia which borders Armenia. Cases of lung cancer in the area has increased dramatically recently and the Turkish government is obviously curious as to why this happened.v And while the Turkish government claims that this new program to monitor radiation levels is not related to Metsamor, the sad fact of the current geopolitical situation in the Caucuses is that everything said by governments in the area must be taken with a grain of salt. Finally, the human element of the situation can not be ignored. The Metsamor plant is located merely twenty-eight kilometers from the capital of Yerevan. Yerevan is home to one and a half million people, basically half the entire population of Armenia. The fears of the effects of a large earthquake would have on on Yerevan has been mentioned here, and many environmentalists and human rights activists believe that Metsamor is an equally important issue.

Since most people will agree that the Metsamor plant needs to be updated, the Armenian government approved the construction of a new nuclear plant in 2008. Construction of the plant may be started as earlier as this year and is scheduled to be commissioned in 2017. The cost is quite high, upwards of five to seven billion dollars, but the investment is seen by many as a wise one. The new plant could be capable of producing more than twice the electricity than the current Metsamor plant.vi The benefit to the Armenian people is obvious. By producing more electricity, prices will drop to approximately ten cents a kilowatt hour. Less obvious but just as important will be the benefit to Iran, Turkey, and Georgia. There is potential for a massive power surplus to be generated by the new plant, and the excess electricity will be sold to neighboring countries. Coupled with the idea that these three countries will be facing electricity shortages in the next few years, being an electricity broker will help keep the lights on and make Armenia a more important regional player. Unfortunately, the high price tag is going to be a difficult hurdle to surmount. If the plant costs five billion dollars, that would be almost half of the Armenian GDP for 2008 and more than double the national budget for 2009. Foreign investment is the only option, but luckily there has been some interest from Russian energy firms.vii

The nature of the Armenian economy makes the Metsamor plant a particularly divisive topic. As with many industries in Armenia; factories, mines, road construction, the choice is once again environmental and public health versus the need for paying jobs. Sergey Grigoryan and Aramayis Gasparyan are two of the men caught up in this struggle. On one hand they were exposed to radioactive dust that they inhaled during an accident nearly twenty-five years ago. The third man who was exposed died nine years after the accident when he was 34 years old. On the other hand Grigoryan and Gasparyan continue to work at the plant even after being considered partially disabled in 1992. They are aware that the plant is bad for their health, they are not ignorant. But in order to put food on the table for their families they continue to work at a place that may be slowly killing them. This mind-set is not only limited to plant workers. Residents of the town of Metsamor feel the same and unhappy with rumors that the plant may be closed. Since the plant is the largest employer of the town, they are worried about their financial futures.viii It has been said that “hunger is the best motivation.” It certainly seems reasonable that the threat of hunger continues to motivate people to work and live near the plant despite all health risks that the locals are quite aware of.

The future of nuclear power in Armenia is the future of Armenia. With no large natural gas, oil, or coal deposits nuclear power seems to be the only option for large scale power production that does not heavily rely on imports from foreign nations. The geography of Armenia is simply not suited to other “green” electric productions such as solar or wind power. While there are a few new windmills located in the northern part of the country, they will never be able to produce enough electricity to keep Armenia out of the dark. It seems like that if a new plant is not built, Metsamor will stay open past the 2016 retirement date and continue to deteriorate and poison the local residents and environment.




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