Dams

Take away ideas and understandings

• Reservoirs provide a more stable water supply, a source of energy, and some protection against floods.
• Reservoirs have many negative effects such as displacement of human populations, destruction of ecosystems, redistribution of water resources, and loss of reservoir volume due to sediment deposition.

• besides reducing the risk of floods and providing a more reliable water supply, dams have lots of negative effects, some of which are highlighted in the case study about the Colorado River
• a particularly big problem is the sediment load of certain rivers and the 'silting up' of dams
• examples:
• Dams worldwide & sedimentation in Puerto Rico reservoirs
• Large river sediment discharge by region (map)
• Reservoir siltation time-scales: Nile, Indus, Yangtze.
• a summary of issues related to dams is given in the talk given by Marc Reisner at the State of the World conference at CU in 1999 (The age of dams and its legacy, Earth Matters, winter 99/00)
• take notes of the presentation
• present the key points in a structured outline in a fomat similar to the lecture notes on this web site

Resources

• Streaming video of Marc Reisner's talk at CU 'State of the world conference', 1999  16-36 min?
• The age of dams and its legacy, Earth Matters, winter 99/00
• River management in Pakistan and China, Lecture 7, U4735x, by James Simpson