Fragmentation and Flow Regulation of the World's Large River Systems

By C. Nilsson, C. Reidy, M. Dynesius, C. Revenga. Science, 2005

3,449 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ada99983166031355f2fef75ddde91d043d30479

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Citations in the corpus

Should We Build More Large Dams? The Actual Costs of Hydropower Megaproject Development (2014, background): “Beyond the financial calculus, large dams have profound environmental (McCully, 2001; Scudder, 2005; Stone, 2011), ecological (Nilsson et al., 2005; Ziv et al., 2012), and social (Bakker, 1999; Duflo and Pande, 2007; Richter et al.”
Simulated recruitment of riparian trees and shrubs under natural and regulated flow regimes on the Wisconsin River, USA (2006, background): “Of the external stressors inﬂuencing riparian habitats, ﬂow regulation may be the most pervasive, with the majority of the world’s large rivers inﬂuenced by dams (Nilsson et al ., 2005).”
Water and economic development : The role of variability and a framework for resilience (2006, background): “If the water were to fall equally throughout the year, as is the case in Europe and North America, these statistics would characterize the level of water scarcity actually faced.”
Fish and fisheries in the Upper Mekong: current assessment of the fish community, threats and conservation (2009, neutral): “The threats to fish biodiversity Dam construction, overfishing, exotic species introduction and pollution are all serious problems contributing to the decline of fish biodiversity and fisheries (Rosenberg et al. 1997; Nilsson et al. 2005).”
Comparing flow regime, channel hydraulics, and biological communities to infer flow–ecology relationships in the Mara River of Kenya and Tanzania (2014, background): “…of aquatic systems and alarming evidence that the flow regimes of rivers around the world are being severely altered by engineered infrastructure, land-use change, and water withdrawal (Poff et al. 1997, Naiman et al. 2002, Postel and Richter 2003, Nilsson et al. 2005, Arthington et al. 2010).”
Challenges for freshwater invertebrate conservation (2006, background): “½ of the world; only tundra regions are drained predominantly by undammed rivers (Nilsson et al. 2005).”
Predicting local extinctions of Amazonian vertebrates in forest islands created by a mega dam (2015, background): “Assessments of the social and environmental impacts of large dams worldwide have so far primarily focused on flooding of indigenous territories and displacements of local communities (Esselman and Opperman, 2010), alterations in fluvial hydrology (Nilsson et al., 2005), augmented emissions of greenh”
Conservation biogeography of freshwater fishes: recent progress and future challenges (2010, background): “…(Jackson et al., 2001a,b), reservoirs trap 25% of the global sediment load before it reaches the oceans (Syvitski et al., 2005), river systems have been fragmented by c. 1 million dams globally (Nilsson et al., 2005), and many inland fisheries are vulnerable to collapse (Allan et al., 2005).”
State of the world's freshwater ecosystems: physical, chemical, and biological changes. (2011, background): “Natural flow regimes and hydrologic connectivity of approximately 60% of the world’s large river basins are now affected by dams (20).”
An index-based framework for assessing patterns and trends in river fragmentation and flow regulation by global dams at multiple scales (2017, methodology): “The DOR has in one form or another been a key component of seminal studies on flow regulation (e.g., Nilsson et al 2005) or has been analyzed in terms of the hydrologically equivalent ‘change in residence time’ or ‘water aging’ (e.g., Vörösmarty et al 1997).”
Environmental flows and the European Water Framework Directive. (2010, background): “and supporting industry, with many impacts directly resulting from fragmentation by dams (Nilsson et al., 2005).”
Where once the eel and the elephant were together: decline of the European eel because of changing hydrology in southwest Europe and northwest Africa? (2011, background): “For most species, the construction of dams on most of the major rivers has led to a fragmentation of habitat (Dynesius and Nilsson 1994; Nilsson et al. 2005) and increased the risk of extinction of separated populations (e.”
Reservoirs promote the taxonomic homogenization of fish communities within river basins (2010, background): “…alterations of freshwater environments, dam construction is one of the most widely distributed across the globe, causing alterations of the natural flow regimes, fragmentation of fluvial networks, and large-scale disruption of sediment transport (Poff et al. 1997; Nilsson et al. 2005).”
Dispersal distance and the pool of taxa, but not barriers, determine the colonisation of restored river reaches by benthic invertebrates (2014, background): “wide and has received intensive research focus (Nilsson et al., 2005; Fullerton et al., 2010; Liermann et al., 2012).”
Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Environmental Change and Management Actions for Migrating Fish (2019, background): “Damming is one of the most widespread environmental alterations of river ecosystems, affecting about half of all large river systems globally (Nilsson et al., 2005; Grill et al., 2015).”
Effects of connectivity, dispersal directionality and functional traits on the metacommunity structure of river benthic diatoms (2013, background): “Dams also form dispersal barriers for swimming organisms, such as fish (Pringle et al., 2000; Nilsson et al., 2005) and enhance sedimentation rates in reservoirs, reducing the downstream transport of matter (Thornton, 1990).”
The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection (2014, background): “For freshwater species, direct and indirect habitat modification, including pollution (88) and the already extensive and continuing fragmentation and flow regulation of rivers (89), are clearly major drivers of extinction, especially for species with limited dispersal abilities.”