Iran: Persepolis waterworks, Yazd wind towers and Lake Urmia

Iranica places the start of construction around 518 BCE, when Darius I chose a promontory for a 125,000 m² platform. Rainwater channels carved into the rock led toward a moat. A 26 m well connected to it may also have held water for summer; parts of the drainage network still work as intended. A separate entry dates the Treasury tablets to 492–458 BCE and uses them to trace supplies and silver for the royal workforce, chiefly people in Persepolis and its suburbs, including named groups from Cappadocia, Lydia and Babylonia.[1][2]

UNESCO describes Yazd’s older districts as organized around qanats, each with a communal centre. Earthen buildings and courtyards below street level are part of the same desert adaptation. Iranica describes two ways wind towers move air: a breeze can send roof-level air into summer rooms, while with little or no breeze sunlight on the tower masonry can generate an upward draft that brings cooler, moisture-rich air from courtyard and below-ground spaces into summer living areas. Towers above cisterns can also help cool stored water through evaporation.[3][4][5]

The cited studies measure different parts of the lake’s decline. Shadkam and co-authors’ model estimates a 48% fall in annual inflow from 1960 to 2010; it attributes about three fifths to climate change and two fifths to water-resources development, and finds irrigation reduced flows by up to 40% in dry years. The 2015 AghaKouchak commentary’s abstract instead reports about an 88% decline in satellite-detected lake area, far more than earlier estimates of 25–50%, and argues that prolonged drought alone does not explain the continuing shoreline retreat. NASA reported a 62 cm increase in depth after rains in late 2018 and spring 2019, compared with spring 2018.[6][7][8]