Ecosystems
Mesopotamian Marshes
Also Known As Iraqi Marshes · Ahwar of Southern Iraq
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
A vast freshwater marshland fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq, once among the largest wetland systems in the Middle East and western Eurasia, and the traditional home of the Marsh Arabs, or Ma'dan, whose reed-built dwellings and boat-based way of life trace back to the same delta's ancient Sumerian settlements. The marshes were deliberately drained through large-scale engineering projects in the 1990s, reducing them to a small fraction of their historic extent within a decade; large sections have since been reflooded and are recovering following the 2003 change of government, though how much of the historic marsh has genuinely returned varies significantly across sources and years and is carried here as an open question rather than a single settled figure. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016 under the name Ahwar of Southern Iraq, a listing that combines four wetland marsh components with three archaeological sites of ancient Sumerian cities, Uruk, Ur and Eridu, that once bordered the same marshland.
Facts
Area (sq km)This is the article's current, post-reflooding headline figure; the marshes historically covered roughly 20,000 square kilometers before large-scale 20th-century drainage, which the same article separately notes. Cross-Tradition Connections
Demonstrates
The marshes exist only because Tigris-Euphrates river inflow keeps them flooded; the 1990s drainage and post-2003 reflooding are a direct, large-scale human intervention in that same water cycle.
In Biome
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
How much of the historic Mesopotamian Marshes has actually been restored since 2003?
The marshes were reduced to a small fraction of their pre-1990s extent by deliberate drainage, and reflooding has been underway since 2003, but published figures for the currently restored area diverge significantly by source and by year, and many describe the recovery only in relative terms (a share of the historic maximum) rather than a settled square-kilometer figure. Water flow from the Tigris and Euphrates, itself affected by upstream damming in Turkey, Syria and Iran and by regional drought, keeps changing the extent year to year rather than letting it settle.
What would resolve this A current, dated satellite-derived wetland-extent survey, ideally repeated over consecutive years by the same methodology, published by a body such as UN Environment, the Iraqi government's own marshland restoration program, or a peer-reviewed remote-sensing study, would give a figure that can be cited with real confidence rather than the mixed and dated estimates currently circulating.
Wetland ecology and remote sensingUNESCO World Heritage Centre
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.