Integrated approach to water resource management in Mashhad Plain, Iran: actor analysis, cognitive mapping, and roadmap development.

Iran's Mashhad Plain faces a severe water crisis due to the excessive exploitation of groundwater, leading to the depletion of its aquifer. While water demand management is recognized as a superior solution compared to supply projects, its implementation presents notable challenges. This study addresses the urgent necessity to curtail water demand in the Mashhad Plain by alleviating conflicts among various stakeholders, including water resource managers and consumers.

Sustainability assessment of water management at river basin level: Concept, methodology and application.

A practical approach for understanding and monitoring the sustainability of a river basin as a complex socio-hydrological system is to co-develop an indicator-based assessment framework with the help of the major stakeholders. This study defines the concept of Sustainability Assessment (SA) in the context of water management at basin level. A step-by-step methodology is proposed and further applied for developing indicator-based SA framework in the complex and overexploited Mashhad Basin in Iran.