Dam removal
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The science and practice of river restoration Open
River restoration is one of the most prominent areas of applied water‐resources science. From an initial focus on enhancing fish habitat or river appearance, primarily through structural modification of channel form, restoration has expand…
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Dam removal: Listening in Open
Dam removal is widely used as an approach for river restoration in the United States. The increase in dam removals—particularly large dams—and associated dam‐removal studies over the last few decades motivated a working group at the USGS J…
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Cooperative filling approaches for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Open
Strategies for filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and implications for downstream water resources are analyzed using a river basin planning model with a wide range of historical hydrological conditions and increasing coordination …
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River restoration by dam removal: Enhancing connectivity at watershed scales Open
The prolonged history of industrialization, flood control, and hydropower production has led to the construction of 80,000 dams across the U.S. generating significant hydrologic, ecological, and social adjustments. With the increased ecolo…
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Conceptualizing Ecological Responses to Dam Removal: If You Remove It, What's to Come? Open
One of the desired outcomes of dam decommissioning and removal is the recovery of aquatic and riparian ecosystems. To investigate this common objective, we synthesized information from empirical studies and ecological theory into conceptua…
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How Big of an Effect Do Small Dams Have? Using Geomorphological Footprints to Quantify Spatial Impact of Low-Head Dams and Identify Patterns of Across-Dam Variation Open
Longitudinal connectivity is a fundamental characteristic of rivers that can be disrupted by natural and anthropogenic processes. Dams are significant disruptions to streams. Over 2,000,000 low-head dams (<7.6 m high) fragment United State…
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Biomic river restoration: A new focus for river management Open
River management based solely on physical science has proven to be unsustainable and unsuccessful, evidenced by the fact that the problems this approach intended to solve (e.g., flood hazards, water scarcity, and channel instability) have …
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The stream evolution triangle: Integrating geology, hydrology, and biology Open
The foundations of river restoration science rest comfortably in the fields of geology, hydrology, and engineering, and yet, the impetus for many, if not most, stream restoration projects is biological recovery. Although Lane's stream bala…
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Geomorphic Evolution of a Gravel‐Bed River Under Sediment‐Starved Versus Sediment‐Rich Conditions: River Response to the World's Largest Dam Removal Open
Understanding river response to sediment pulses is a fundamental problem in geomorphic process studies, with myriad implications for river management. However, because large sediment pulses are rare and usually unanticipated, they are seld…
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Synthesis of Common Management Concerns Associated with Dam Removal Open
Managers make decisions regarding if and how to remove dams in spite of uncertainty surrounding physical and ecological responses, and stakeholders often raise concerns about certain negative effects, regardless of whether these concerns a…
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Collaborative management of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam increases economic benefits and resilience Open
The landscape of water infrastructure in the Nile Basin is changing with the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Although this dam could improve electricity supply in Ethiopia and its neighbors, there is a lack of consensu…
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Optimizing Sediment Diversion Operations: Working Group Recommendations for Integrating Complex Ecological and Social Landscape Interactions Open
Future conditions of coastal Louisiana are highly uncertain due to the dynamic nature of deltas, climate change, tropical storms, and human reliance on natural resources and ecosystem services. Managing a system in which natural and socio-…
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Landscape context and the biophysical response of rivers to dam removal in the United States Open
Dams have been a fundamental part of the U.S. national agenda over the past two hundred years. Recently, however, dam removal has emerged as a strategy for addressing aging, obsolete infrastructure and more than 1,100 dams have been remove…
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A multiscale approach to balance trade-offs among dam infrastructure, river restoration, and cost Open
Significance We assess the trade-offs and synergies involved with coordinated dam removal at three spatial scales in New England. We find that increasing the scale of dam decisions improves trade-offs among ecosystem services, river safety…
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Labyrinths in large reservoirs: An invisible barrier to fish migration and the solution through reservoir operation Open
Reservoir construction changes a river's natural flows and temperature, thereby threatening fish migration. Researchers have tried to restore fish migration passages by ensuring environmental flows in downstream river channels. However, re…
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Environmental DNA is an effective tool to track recolonizing migratory fish following large‐scale dam removal Open
Environmental DNA (eDNA) has emerged as a potentially powerful tool for use in conservation and resource management, including for tracking the recolonization dynamics of fish populations. We used eDNA to assess the effectiveness of dam re…
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Dams, dam costs and damnable cost overruns Open
Major restructuring including commercialisation of the water authorities in Australia during the past several decades has resulted in the loss of much valuable information on dam infrastructure costs. This paper sets out to provide an Aust…
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Robust Recolonization of Pacific Lamprey Following Dam Removals Open
Removal of two dams in the Elwha River basin, Washington, started one of the largest river restoration projects ever attempted in the Pacific Northwest. These dams had eliminated Pacific Lamprey Entosphenus tridentatus populations upstream…
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Review of Effects of Dam Construction on the Ecosystems of River Estuary and Nearby Marine Areas Open
Dams have made great contributions to human society, facilitating flood control, power generation, shipping, agriculture, and industry. However, the construction of dams greatly impacts downstream ecological environments and nearby marine …
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Modeling and Risk Analysis of Dam-Break Flooding in a Semi-Arid Montane Watershed: A Case Study of the Yabous Dam, Northeastern Algeria Open
The risk related to embankment dam breaches needs to be evaluated in order to prepare emergency action plans. The physical and hydrodynamic parameters of the flood wave generated from the dam failure event correspond to various breach para…
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Recovery of a mining-damaged stream ecosystem Open
This paper presents a 30+ year record of changes in benthic macroinvertebrate communities and fish populations associated with improving water quality in mining-influenced streams. Panther Creek, a tributary to the Salmon River in central …
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Responses of macroinvertebrate communities to small dam removals: Implications for bioassessment and restoration Open
Small dam removals are increasing on a global scale; yet, general predictions of organism response to dam removal are constrained by heterogeneity of study designs, implementation strategies, geographies, and characteristics of dams and th…
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Fish passages in South America: an overview of studied facilities and research effort Open
River regulation has fragmented fluvial ecosystems in South America, affecting fish migration and dispersion dynamics. In response, authorities have installed fish passage facilities (FPF) to mitigate impacts. However, little is known abou…
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Dam Renovation to Prolong Reservoir Life and Mitigate Dam Impacts Open
Dams are essential to society, yet have tremendous environmental impacts, for which there is an increasing interest in mitigation. At the same time, sedimentation threatens the sustainability of reservoir storage and reservoir functions. W…
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2D Modeling of Flood Propagation due to the Failure of Way Ela Natural Dam Open
A dam break induced-flood propagation modeling is needed to reduce the losses of any potential dam failure. On the 25 July 2013, there was a dam break generated flood due to the failure of Way Ela Natural Dam that severely damaged houses a…
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Re‐operating dams for environmental flows: From recommendation to practice Open
Dam construction and operation are known to alter the hydrology of rivers and degrade riverine ecosystems. In recent decades, the call to reverse these negative impacts by re‐operating dams has become stronger. Dams can support riverine ec…
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Impact of seasonality and anthropogenic impoundments on dissolved organic matter dynamics in the Klamath River (Oregon/California, USA) Open
Rivers play a major role in the transport and processing of dissolved organic matter (DOM). Disturbances that impact DOM dynamics, such as river impoundments and flow regulation, have consequences for biogeochemical cycling and aquatic eco…
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The Impacts of Dam Construction and Removal on the Genetics of Recovering Steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) Populations across the Elwha River Watershed Open
Dam construction and longitudinal river habitat fragmentation disrupt important life histories and movement of aquatic species. This is especially true for Oncorhynchus mykiss that exhibits both migratory (steelhead) and non-migratory (res…
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Reconnecting the Elwha River: Spatial Patterns of Fish Response to Dam Removal Open
The removal of two large dams on the Elwha River was completed in 2014 with a goal of restoring anadromous salmonid populations. Using observations from ongoing field studies, we compiled a timeline of migratory fish passage upstream of ea…
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Quantification of climate change impact on dam failure risk under hydrological scenarios: a case study from a Spanish dam Open
Dam safety is increasingly subjected to the influence of climate change. Its impacts must be assessed through the integration of the various effects acting on each aspect, considering their interdependencies, rather than just a simple accu…