The Iranian Central Plateau is a vast elevated arid zone covering much of central Iran, including the Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut deserts. Provinces including Yazd, Kerman, Isfahan, and Semnan sit on this plateau. The region faces critical groundwater depletion as surface water is scarce and agricultural and urban demand has exceeded recharge rates.

The Iranian Central Plateau is one of the oldest continuously settled landscapes in the world. Prehistoric sites including Sialk near Kashan demonstrate urban organisation dating to the sixth millennium BC. Through the Bronze Age and Iron Age successive cultures exploited the plateau’s aquifer systems and developed the qanat underground canal technology that made large-scale settlement possible in the arid interior. The Median, Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid empires all drew on the plateau’s human and agricultural resources. The Islamic conquest of the seventh century brought new administrative structures but did not fundamentally alter the plateau’s settlement geography, which remained organised around water access through qanats and seasonal rivers.

The Central Plateau today is Iran’s most water-stressed region. Aquifer depletion is occurring at rates of one to three metres per year across most of the plateau’s major basins. Land subsidence caused by groundwater extraction has been measured at 25 to 35 centimetres per year in parts of the Isfahan and Tehran plains. Cities including Isfahan, Yazd, Kerman, and Kashan face structural threats to their long-term water security. The plateau’s agricultural economy, which depends almost entirely on groundwater, is contracting in areas where wells have run dry.