Restoring Environmental Flows by Modifying Dam Operations
By B. Richter, G. A. Thomas. 2007
637 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The construction of new dams has become one of the most controversial issues in global efforts to alleviate poverty, improve human health, and strengthen regional economies. Unfortunately, this controversy has overshadowed the tremendous opportunity that exists for modifying the operations of existing dams to recover many of the environmental and social benefits of healthy ecosystems that have been compromised by present modes of dam operation. The potential benefits of dam "re-operation" include recovery of fish, shellfish, and other wildlife populations valued both commercially and recreationally, including estuarine species; reactivation of the flood storage and water purification benefits that occur when floods are allowed to flow into floodplain forests and wetlands; regaining some semblance of the naturally dynamic balance between river erosion and sedimentation that shapes physical habitat complexity, and arresting problems associated with geomorphic imbalances; cultural and spiritual uses of rivers; and many other socially valued products and services. This paper describes an assessment framework that can be used to evaluate the benefits that might be restored through dam re-operation. Assessing the potential benefits of dam re-operation begins by characterizing the dam's effects on the river flow regime, and formulating hypotheses about the ecological and social benefits that might be restored by releasing water from the dam in a manner that more closely resembles natural flow patterns. These hypotheses can be tested by implementing a re-operation plan, tracking the response of the ecosystem, and continually refining dam operations through adaptive management. The paper highlights a number of land and water management strategies useful in implementing a dam re-operation plan, with reference to a variety of management contexts ranging from individual dams to cascades of dams along a river to regional energy grids. Because many of the suggested strategies for dam re-operation are predicated on changes in the end-use of the water, such as reductions in urban or agricultural water use during droughts, a systemic perspective of entire water management systems will be required to attain the fullest possible benefits of dam re-operations.
Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Ocean Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e929586f74e4d4cebd88abfc7bde04051b55ef40
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Citations in the corpus
- Water stress in global transboundary river basins: significance of upstream water use on downstream stress (2016, neutral): “Regulation of fl ow regime by dams, for example, is also linked to seasonal variability ( Döll et al 2009 ) and environmental fl ows ( Richter and Thomas 2007, Döll et al 2009 ) .”
- Process-Based Principles for Restoring River Ecosystems (2010, background): “A common example of such actions is the growing number of river-restoration projects that focus on managing flow regimes to improve ecosystem health in dammed rivers (Bednarek and Hart 2005, Richter and Thomas 2007).”
- Linkages between flow regime, biota, and ecosystem processes: Implications for river restoration (2019, background): “Regimes in impounded rivers are typically less seasonal than daily rainfall would suggest, particularly below large hydropower dams with high water-storage capacity rather than below smaller, less impactful run-of-the-river facilities (65).”
- Preserving the biodiversity and ecological services of rivers: new challenges and research opportunities: Preserving the biodiversity and ecological services of rivers (2010, background): “…of the biodiversity, ecological processes and services of stressed rivers by restoring some of the defining characteristics of the original 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Freshwater Biology, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2427.2009.02340.x natural flow regime (Poff et al., 2003; Richter & Thomas, 2007).”