Stream flow changes across North Carolina (USA) 1955–2012 with implications for environmental flow management

Meitzen, Kimberly M.

doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2015.06.019

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Given this limitation, we sought to explicitly adjust for other drivers of change to quantify impacts that are related to the dam, rather than other changes such as land use or climate (Fantin-Cruz et al, 2015). This was accomplished by comparing flow variation in rivers impacted by hydropower plants to flow variation in undammed rivers, which were used as controls (see Singer, 2007;Rheinheimer and Viers, 2015;Meitzen, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dam-Induced Hydrologic Alterations in the Rivers Feeding the Pantanal

Ely

Fantin-Cruz

Tritico

et al. 2020

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Tropical river basins have experienced dramatically increased hydropower development over the last 20 years. These alterations have the potential to cause changes in hydrologic and ecologic systems. One heavily impacted system is the Upper Paraguay River Basin, which feeds the Pantanal wetland. The Pantanal is a Ramsar Heritage site and is one of the world's largest freshwater wetlands. Over the past 20 years, the number of hydropower facilities in the Upper Paraguay River Basin has more than doubled. This paper uses the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA) method to assess the impact of 24 of these dams on the hydrologic regime over 20 years (10 years before and 10 years after dam installation) and proposes a method to disentangle the effects of dams from other drivers of hydrologic change using undammed “control” rivers. While most of these dams are small, run-of-the-river systems, each dam significantly altered at least one of the 33 hydrologic indicators assessed. Across all studied dams, 88 of the 256 calculated indicators changed significantly, causing changes of 5–40%, compared to undammed reaches. These changes were most common in indicators that quantify the frequency and duration of high and low pulses, along with those for the rate and frequency of hydrologic changes. Importantly, the flow regime in several undammed reaches also showed significant alterations, likely due to climate and land-use changes, supporting the need for measurements in representative control systems when attributing causes to observed change. Basin-wide hydrologic changes (in both dammed and undammed rivers) have the potential to fundamentally alter the hydrology, sediment patterns, and ecosystem of the Pantanal wetland. The proposed refinement of the IHA methods reveals crucial differences between dam-induced alteration and those assigned to other drivers of change; these need to be better understood for more efficient management of current hydropower plants or the implementation of future dams.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dam-Induced Hydrologic Alterations in the Rivers Feeding the Pantanal

Ely

Fantin-Cruz

Tritico

et al. 2020

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…A 0.5 value was set as the threshold for D m and D max , and 0.75 was set as the threshold for D a , which is mainly based on the threshold of the IHA and RVA. Even though they have been applied in many studies, some thresholds should be further proved, such as the range of hydrological alteration [52]. The watershed diversity of the threshold values should be considered.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Classifying Dams for Environmental Flow Implementation in China

Chen

McClain

2019

Sustainability

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The implementation of environmental flows is of the utmost importance for ecosystem protection and restoration in dammed rivers. A key challenge in optimizing dam regulation is the uncertainty of the ecohydrology relationship between flow release and ecological response. In the present paper, we develop a framework of dam classification to organize the categories of the ecohydrology relationship for implementing environmental flows. Dams are classified from three major categories that differ in dam properties, hydrological alteration, and downstream hydrobiological diversities based on the relationship of hydrology and ecology. Finally, 773 dams in China are screened and ranked into four classes involving a great diversity of environmental flow components. A classification of dams that utilizes the implementation of environmental flows is presented. (1) Class 1 includes dams with rare and endangered fish species in the downstream. It is the category with the highest priority for environmental flow releases and regulation, requiring continuous flow and flood pulse components for fish spawning and migration. (2) Class 2 includes dams with significant hydrological alteration in the downstream. It is the category with second priority for environmental flow releases and regulation, requiring natural hydrological regimes simulation or complete flow component recovery for optimizing the flow duration curve and mitigating adverse impacts of dam operation. (3) Class 3 includes dams with a high degree of regulation where there is urgency for environmental flow releases and regulation, requiring that minimum flow is guaranteed by cascade reservoir regulation. (4) Class 4 includes dams with a low degree of regulation where there is less urgency for environmental flow releases and regulation. This classification method is important for future research, including environmental flow release regulation and the effectiveness evaluation of environmental flow adaptive management. It will be useful for guiding the implementation of environmental flows.

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“…As the spatial information was taken in the summer season, it was necessary to estimate the magnitude of change with statistical tests. We used Student's t-test [52,53] to evaluate the mean change, and Fisher's [54] F-test to evaluate the variance change, for the preand post-dam periods. Although the literature describes a general tendency due to dam operation (increased discharges during the dry period, medium discharges maintained, and decreased high discharges [51,55,56]), the influence of a dam is also observed in annual values.…”

Section: Discharge and Sediment Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Upstream and Downstream Changes in the Channel Width and Sinuosity Due to Dam Construction in Tropical Rivers: The Case of Colombia

2023

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In Colombia, most of the energy is produced by using water resources. However, the morphological impact of damming has not been thoroughly studied yet. Therefore, upstream and downstream changes in the channel width and sinuosity along the river due to the Betania, Prado, Salvajina, and Urrá I Dams, four of the oldest hydroelectric projects, were estimated. These changes were reported by using aerial photographs and satellite images to compare the river before and after dam construction. The analysis was complemented by including hydrological trends and geological characteristics of the areas to evaluate their relevance on the impacts on channel morphology. It was shown that factors such as valley confinement and the bank’s composition are key to determining the magnitude of the impact downstream of the dam. Upstream of the dam, contrastingly, the influence of the reservoir geometry controls the magnitude of the morphological changes, marking the boundaries of affected areas. The impacts of dam construction on river morphology vary notably, but including the geological characteristics of the river reach can be useful to improve predictions of the channel morphology response. The proposed methodology can be used to identify biotic compensation measures for new projects, a task that is not well defined in several countries.

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Stream flow changes across North Carolina (USA) 1955–2012 with implications for environmental flow management

Cited by 14 publications

References 28 publications

Dam-Induced Hydrologic Alterations in the Rivers Feeding the Pantanal

Dam-Induced Hydrologic Alterations in the Rivers Feeding the Pantanal

Classifying Dams for Environmental Flow Implementation in China

Upstream and Downstream Changes in the Channel Width and Sinuosity Due to Dam Construction in Tropical Rivers: The Case of Colombia

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