Changes in soil and water characteristics

The areas of Mesopotamian marshland and swamps on the Tigris and Euphrates river systems in southern Iraq are known locally as Hor Al-Hammar, which means inland lakes of very shallow waters (1-2m depth), the Central Marshes and the Al-Hawizeh marshes These marshes, until recently, were the most extensive wetland ecosystems in the Middle East (Partow, 2001). It comprised a complex of interconnected, shallow,freshwater lakes, marshes and seasonally inundated floodplains extending from within 150 km of Baghdad in the northwest to the region of Basrah in the southeast (Partow,2001