The Karkheh River Basin (KRB) in southwest Iran is a key region for agriculture and energy production. KRB has high humaninduced water demand and suffers from low water productivity. The future of the KRB and its growth clearly relies on sustainable water resources and hence, requires a holistic, basinwide management and monitoring of natural resources (water, soil, vegetation, livestock, etc.). The KRB has dry regions in which water scarcity is a major challenge. In this study, we investigate changes in the hydrology of the basin during the past three decades including humaninduced alterations of the system. We evaluate climatic variability, agricultural water use, land cover change and agriculture production. In this reaserch, we have developed a simple indicator for quantifying human influence on the hydrologic cycle. The results show that KRB’s hydrology is significantly dominated by human activities. The anthropogenic water demand has increased substantially caused by growth in agriculture industry. In fact, the main reason for water scarcity in the region appears to be due to the increased anthropogenic water demand resulting from substantial socioeconomic growth in the past three decades. Our results show that continued growth in the region is not sustainable without considering major changes in water use efficiency, land cover management and water productivity.

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