Urmia Lake is the largest permanent pond in West Asia and the world's twentieth largest lake that is important from different dimensions. In recent years, this lake was faced to a critical point regarding the decline of water level. Consequently a large part of the Urmia Lake dried and its salinity increased. With the emergence of the environmental crisis, socio-economic and environmental consequences will happen in this area of the country. So this study tries to investigate the impacts of water reduction trend of Urmia Lake, on socio-economic development of the rural areas in Urmia Township. The study was done by a descriptive-surveying method that including field and documentary data. The validity of research tool was obtained by the idea of experts and for reliability of questionnaires a pilot test was conducted. The Cronbach’ Alpha coefficient of higher than 0.7 showed that research tool was reliable. Population of the study include two groups’ namely rural people and experts. The first statistical sample, firstly the distance between the centers of all rural settings in Urmia Township from the coastline was determined. Then the rural setting of Bakeshluchay village was selected as the nearest rural setting to the lake that involved the largest population. Sample size was determined using the Cochran formula (n 1 =200 and n 2 =115) and afterwards was divided through the proportional allocation between different justify; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 12pt 0in 8pt" Keywords: Urmia Lake, Socio-economic development, Rural area, Urmia Township.
