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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