Qeshm Island's extreme aridity and rapid growth expose a mismatch between headline per-capita renewable water figures and actual aquifer stress. Using multi-decadal precipitation, census, and well records, we estimate renewable supply, recharge, storage, and salinity. Natural replenishment is minimal: about 60% of rainfall is lost to evaporation and most of the remainder leaves as runoff, yielding little effective recharge. Under trend-based demographic projections, renewable water per capita declines to 757 m 3 per person per year by 2036 (medium evaporation-loss scenario). Groundwater observations show a long-term water-table decline near 0. 091 m per year and salinity rising to about 14 to 16. 6 dS/m, consistent with persistent overdraft and seawater intrusion or up-coning. To translate hydrologic limits into development choices, we evaluate a conservative 40% withdrawal of renewable yield with a mixed allocation 70% agriculture, 20% industry, 10% domestic. At this intensity the budget can irrigate about 1, 523 ha of date palms, support roughly 335, 000 t/yr of petrochemical output, and supply about 23, 841 residents, generating approximately 16. 45 million (agriculture), 334. 69 million (industry), and 0. 22 million (domestic) per year around 351 million in total. These results show that per-capita indicators alone can overstate security; resilient coastal-marine development on Qeshm will require aligning withdrawals with limited renewability and storage, coupled with managed aquifer recharge, targeted desalination, and selective use of saline groundwater to protect potable supplies and industrial applications requiring low-salinity makeup water (e. g. , boiler and cooling systems), where acceptable conductivity is typically ≲0. 2-2 dS m⁻¹ with low hardness and silica.
Mahjoobi et al. (2026) studied this question.