Hamun Lakes

The Hamun Lakes, also spelled Hamoun, are best understood as a connected wetland landscape rather than a single lake with a permanent shoreline. Hamun-e-Puzak, Hamun-e-Saberi and Hamun-e-Helmand occupy the Sistan Basin along the Iran–Afghanistan border. The Ramsar wetland information sheet describes a system receiving water from the Helmand, also called Hirmand, the Farah River and smaller rivers originating in Afghanistan. Ramsar is the international convention concerned with wetland conservation. s1

These waters collect in an internally drained basin: they do not follow an ordinary river outlet to the ocean. Nevertheless, the lakes can be predominantly fresh rather than uniformly saline. The historical Ramsar account explains that large floods can pass through the connected lakes and flush salts toward a terminal depression farther southeast. Connections between individual lakes therefore matter alongside the total amount of incoming water. s1

Water levels normally rise in spring and decline through the following months. Large areas can dry during this regular cycle. The US Geological Survey explains that the wetlands’ shallowness makes their extent particularly sensitive to changing inflows; irrigation expansion increases their vulnerability when drought arrives. During prolonged dry periods, fishing becomes impossible and birds move elsewhere. s2

A dry-season photograph consequently cannot, by itself, establish that the whole complex has permanently disappeared. The USGS image sequence spans several decades, but its scenes were captured in different months. They document changing conditions without constituting a directly comparable annual measurement series. Reading those images requires attention to both the observation date and the seasonal water cycle. s2

NASA’s historical account describes fishing, livestock keeping, farming and reed-boat use around the wetlands. Water supported an inhabited landscape whose livelihoods depended on the relationship between rivers, marsh vegetation and shallow lakes. Its reconstruction of late twentieth-century change identified irrigation development, dams, urban expansion and severe drought as interacting pressures. That account concerns a historical episode; its descriptions of devastation should not be presented as a survey of conditions today. s4

The distinction between water returning and a lasting recovery is therefore essential. Renewed flooding can change the visible landscape, while the reliability of future river deliveries remains a separate question. NASA’s account emphasizes multiple causes and uncertainty about their relative contributions, rather than assigning the entire decline to one intervention. s4

The consequences extend beyond the shoreline. NASA’s February 2023 assessment links persistent drought and upstream withdrawals to shrinking wetlands, reduced vegetation and exposed sediment. Strong winds can lift that material into the atmosphere. Dust events are most frequent in summer but can occur in other seasons when the lakebed is dry. s3

Satellite observations documented dust streaming from the exposed bed in January 2023, with modeled transport extending beyond the immediate basin. This establishes a connection between wetland condition and a wider atmospheric hazard. It does not establish a precise water level or inundated area at the editorial cutoff. The most useful way to understand Hamun is as a variable river-fed system whose ecological and social functions depend on recurring water delivery. s3

How wetland drying can increase dust exposure

The arrows describe mechanisms documented by NASA. They do not quantify the separate contributions of drought and withdrawals or imply that every dry episode produces the same dust conditions.