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Dams And Environment
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Book Synopsis Riverine Ecosystem Management by : Stefan Schmutz
Download or read book Riverine Ecosystem Management written by Stefan Schmutz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book surveys the frontier of scientific river research and provides examples to guide management towards a sustainable future of riverine ecosystems. Principal structures and functions of the biogeosphere of rivers are explained; key threats are identified, and effective solutions for restoration and mitigation are provided. Rivers are among the most threatened ecosystems of the world. They increasingly suffer from pollution, water abstraction, river channelisation and damming. Fundamental knowledge of ecosystem structure and function is necessary to understand how human acitivities interfere with natural processes and which interventions are feasible to rectify this. Modern water legislation strives for sustainable water resource management and protection of important habitats and species. However, decision makers would benefit from more profound understanding of ecosystem degradation processes and of innovative methodologies and tools for efficient mitigation and restoration. The book provides best-practice examples of sustainable river management from on-site studies, European-wide analyses and case studies from other parts of the world. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of aquatic ecology, river system functioning, conservation and restoration, to postgraduate students, to institutions involved in water management, and to water related industries.
Download or read book Deep Water written by Jacques Leslie and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If the wars of the last century were fought over oil, the wars of this century will be fought over water." -Ismail Serageldin, The World Bank The giant dams of today are the modern Pyramids, colossally expensive edifices that generate monumental amounts of electricity, irrigated water, and environmental and social disaster. With Deep Water, Jacques Leslie offers a searching account of the current crisis over dams and the world's water. An emerging master of long-form reportage, Leslie makes the crisis vivid through the stories of three distinctive figures: Medha Patkar, an Indian activist who opposes a dam that will displace thousands of people in western India; Thayer Scudder, an American anthropologist who studies the effects of giant dams on the peoples of southern Africa; and Don Blackmore, an Australian water manager who struggles to reverse the effects of drought so as to allow Australia to continue its march to California-like prosperity. Taking the reader to the sites of controversial dams, Leslie shows why dams are at once the hope of developing nations and a blight on their people and landscape. Deep Water is an incisive, beautifully written, and deeply disquieting report on a conflict that threatens to divide the world in the coming years.
Book Synopsis Impacts of Large Dams: A Global Assessment by : Cecilia Tortajada
Download or read book Impacts of Large Dams: A Global Assessment written by Cecilia Tortajada and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most controversial issues of the water sector in recent years has been the impacts of large dams. Proponents have claimed that such structures are essential to meet the increasing water demands of the world and that their overall societal benefits far outweight the costs. In contrast, the opponents claim that social and environmental costs of large dams far exceed their benefits, and that the era of construction of large dams is over. A major reason as to why there is no consensus on the overall benefits of large dams is because objective, authoritative and comprehensive evaluations of their impacts, especially ten or more years after their construction, are conspicuous by their absence. This book debates impartially, comprehensively and objectively, the positive and negative impacts of large dams based on facts, figures and authoritative analyses. These in-depth case studies are expected to promote a healthy and balanced debate on the needs, impacts and relevance of large dams, with case studies from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America.
Book Synopsis Environmental Flow Assessment by : John G. Williams
Download or read book Environmental Flow Assessment written by John G. Williams and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-06-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides critiques of current practices for environmental flow assessment and shows how they can be improved, using case studies. In Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications, four leading experts critique methods used to manage flows in regulated streams and rivers to balance environmental (instream) and out-of-stream uses of water. Intended for managers as well as practitioners, the book dissects the shortcomings of commonly used approaches, and offers practical advice for selecting and implementing better ones. The authors argue that methods for environmental flow assessment (EFA) can be defensible as well as practicable only if they squarely address uncertainty, and provide guidance for doing so. Introductory chapters describe the scientific and social reasons that EFA is hard, and provide a brief history. Because management of regulated streams starts with understanding freshwater ecosystems, Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications includes chapters on flow and organisms in streams. The following chapters assess standard and emerging methods, how they should be tested, and how they should (or should not) be applied. The book concludes with practical recommendations for implementing environmental flow assessment. Describes historical and recent trends in environmental flow assessment Directly addresses practical difficulties with applying a scientifically informed approach in contentious circumstances Serves as an effective introduction to the relevant literature, with many references to articles in related scientific fields Pays close attention to statistical issues such as sampling, estimation of statistical uncertainty, and model selection Includes recommendations for methods and approaches Examines how methods have been tested in the past and shows how they should be tested today and in the future Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications is an excellent book for biologists and specialists in allied fields such as engineering, ecology, fluvial geomorphology, environmental planning, landscape architecture, along with river managers and decision makers.
Book Synopsis The Future of Large Dams by : Thayer Ted Scudder
Download or read book The Future of Large Dams written by Thayer Ted Scudder and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2012 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Viewed by some as symbols of progress and by others as inherently flawed, large dams remain one of the most contentious development issues on Earth. Building on the work of the now defunct World Commission on Dams, Thayer Scudder wades into the debate with unprecedented authority.Employing the Commission's Seven Strategic priorities, Scudder charts the 'middle way' forward by examining the impacts of large dams on ecosystems, societies and political economies. He also analyses the structure of the decision-making process for water resource development and tackles the highly contentious issue of dam-induced resettlement, illuminated by a statistical analysis of 50 cases.
Book Synopsis Dams and Reservoirs, Societies and Environment in the 21st Century by : Luis Berga
Download or read book Dams and Reservoirs, Societies and Environment in the 21st Century written by Luis Berga and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2006-02-15 with total page 1373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water resources stored by dams and reservoirs play an essential role in water resource management, hydropower and flood control. Where there is an extensive network of dam infrastructures, dams have made a major contribution to economic and social development, providing considerable storage capacity per capita. However, dams and reservoirs may also have an important social and environmental impact, and should be studied within the framework of integrated water resource management and sustainable development. Dams and Reservoirs, Societies and Environment in the 21st Century presents the latest research on the role played by dams and reservoirs in 21st century societies, in developed, emergent and developing countries. It analyses the viability of dams and suggests alternative solutions from a holistic perspective, considering the technical, economic, social and environmental aspects. Other issues covered include the social acceptability of dams, public involvement and dam awareness. The book covers subjects ranging from dam engineering, through the benefits and drawbacks of dams, to their social and environmental impact, and contains numerous case studies of the constructive contributions that reservoirs have made to water development and management. The book is a valuable resource for professional and dam engineers, water managers, governmental organizations and commercial enterprises responsible for dam development and management.
Book Synopsis Dams and Development by : World Commission on Dams
Download or read book Dams and Development written by World Commission on Dams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the year 2000, the world had built more than 45,000 large dams to irrigate crops, generate power, control floods in wet times and store water in dry times. Yet, in the last century, large dams also disrupted the ecology of half the world's rivers, displaced tens of millions of people from their homes and left nations burdened with debt. Their impacts have inevitably generated growing controversy and conflicts. Resolving their role in meeting water and energy needs is vital for the future and illustrates the complex development challenges that face our societies. The Report of the World Commission on Dams: - is the product of an unprecedented global public policy effort to bring governments, the private sector and civil society together in one process - provides the first comprehensive global and independent review of the performance and impacts of dams - presents a new framework for water and energy resources development - develops an agenda of seven strategic priorities with corresponding criteria and guidelines for future decision-making. Challenging our assumptions, the Commission sets before us the hard, rigorous and clear-eyed evidence of exactly why nations decide to build dams and how dams can affect human, plant and animal life, for better or for worse. Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making is vital reading on the future of dams as well as the changing development context where new voices, choices and options leave little room for a business-as-usual scenario.
Book Synopsis Dams and Development by : Sanjeev Khagram
Download or read book Dams and Development written by Sanjeev Khagram and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big dams built for irrigation, power, water supply, and other purposes were among the most potent symbols of economic development for much of the twentieth century. Of late they have become a lightning rod for challenges to this vision of development as something planned by elites with scant regard for environmental and social consequences—especially for the populations that are displaced as their homelands are flooded. In this book, Sanjeev Khagram traces changes in our ideas of what constitutes appropriate development through the shifting transnational dynamics of big dam construction. Khagram tells the story of a growing, but contentious, world society that features novel and increasingly efficacious norms of appropriate behavior in such areas as human rights and environmental protection. The transnational coalitions and networks led by nongovernmental groups that espouse such norms may seem weak in comparison with states, corporations, and such international agencies as the World Bank. Yet they became progressively more effective at altering the policies and practices of these historically more powerful actors and organizations from the 1970s on. Khagram develops these claims in a detailed ethnographic account of the transnational struggles around the Narmada River Valley Dam Projects in central India, a huge complex of thirty large and more than three thousand small dams. He offers further substantiation through a comparative historical analysis of the political economy of big dam projects in India, Brazil, South Africa, and China as well as by examining the changing behavior of international agencies and global companies. The author concludes with a discussion of the World Commission on Dams, an innovative attempt in the late 1990s to generate new norms among conflicting stakeholders.
Download or read book The Large Dam Dilemma written by Pu Wang and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Large dam construction has significant environmental and social impacts at different scales. As the largest developing country in the world, China has built about half of the world’s large dams, and more are expected to be built over the next two decades to meet the country’s rapidly growing demand for energy. This book summarizes and updates information about the history, distribution, functions, and impacts of large dams, both globally and at China’s national level. It then addresses the environmental and social-economic impacts of large dams in China with particular emphasis on the impacts of large dams on relocated people and associated compensation policies. Lastly, it introduces an integrated ecological and socio-economic study conducted in areas affected by dams along the Upper Mekong River, China. This book has the following three goals. The first goal is to summarize and update information on large dams globally and at China’s national level (Ch. 2). We examine large dam problems from different perspectives, ranging from their spatial and temporal distributions and their environmental and social impacts, to discussions and debates centered on them. We also incorporate the results of an empirical investigation of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of large dams on the Upper Mekong River, China, and draw conclusions out of the analysis (Chs.3 & 4). Our second goal is to provide an analysis framework to help understand the environmental and social-economic impacts of dam construction and the resulting environmental degradations and social inequities at different scales (Chs.3 & 4), as well as to offer recommendations for mitigating these impacts within China’s socio-political context (Ch. 5). The significant environmental effects resulting from dam construction include damage to ecological integrity and loss of biological diversity. The most significant social consequences brought by dam projects are their negative impacts on relocated people. Our analysis framework provides approaches to help comprehensively understand these impacts. Our third goal is to provide clues and suggestions for further studies of large dam problems both globally and in China (Ch. 5). The construction of large dams is proceeding rapidly in different parts of the world despite the heated debates on whether they should be built at all. The decision-making process related to building large dams involves considerations of economic viability, environmental sustainability, and social equity. Therefore, interdisciplinary collaborations are required in large dam research and development projects in order to reconcile the interests of different stakeholders and avoid harming ecosystems, biodiversity, and human welfare. Overall, we hope our book facilitates future examinations of large dams by providing summaries of existing data and research related to large dams, and offering a framework for better understanding and analyzing their environmental and social impacts.
Book Synopsis Dams and Reservoirs, Societies and Environment in the 21st Century, Two Volume Set by : Luis Berga
Download or read book Dams and Reservoirs, Societies and Environment in the 21st Century, Two Volume Set written by Luis Berga and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 1370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water resources stored by dams and reservoirs play an essential role in water resource management, hydropower and flood control. Where there is an extensive network of dam infrastructures, dams have made a major contribution to economic and social development, providing considerable storage capacity per capita. However, dams and reservoirs may
Book Synopsis Environmental ScienceBites by : Kylienne A. Clark
Download or read book Environmental ScienceBites written by Kylienne A. Clark and published by The Ohio State University. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was written by undergraduate students at The Ohio State University (OSU) who were enrolled in the class Introduction to Environmental Science. The chapters describe some of Earth's major environmental challenges and discuss ways that humans are using cutting-edge science and engineering to provide sustainable solutions to these problems. Topics are as diverse as the students, who represent virtually every department, school and college at OSU. The environmental issue that is described in each chapter is particularly important to the author, who hopes that their story will serve as inspiration to protect Earth for all life.
Book Synopsis Dams and Development in China by : Bryan Tilt
Download or read book Dams and Development in China written by Bryan Tilt and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is home to half of the world's large dams and adds dozens more each year. The benefits are considerable: dams deliver hydropower, provide reliable irrigation water, protect people and farmland against flooding, and produce hydroelectricity in a nation with a seeimingly insatiable appetite for energy. As hydropower responds to a larger share of energy demand, dams may also help to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, welcome news in a country where air and water pollution have become dire and greenhouse gas emissions are the highest in the world. Yet the advantages of dams come at a high cost for river ecosystems and for the social and economic well-being of local people, who face displacement and farmland loss. This book examines the array of water-management decisions faced by Chinese leaders and their consequences for local communities. Focusing on the southwestern province of Yunnan—a major hub for hydropower development in China—which encompasses one of the world's most biodiverse temperate ecosystems and one of China's most ethnically and culturally rich regions, Bryan Tilt takes the reader from the halls of decision-making power in Beijing to Yunnan's rural villages. In the process, he examines the contrasting values of government agencies, hydropower corporations, NGOs, and local communities and explores how these values are linked to longstanding cultural norms about what is right, proper, and just. He also considers the various strategies these groups use to influence water-resource policy, including advocacy, petitioning, and public protest. Drawing on a decade of research, he offers his insights on whether the world's most populous nation will adopt greater transparency, increased scientific collaboration, and broader public participation as it continues to grow economically.
Download or read book Muskrat Falls written by Stephen Crocker and published by Social and Economic Papers. This book was released on 2021 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For almost a decade now, the 13 billion dollar Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project has been a central defining problem in the public life of Newfoundland and Labrador. As the essays collected in Muskrat Falls: How a Mega-Dam Became a Predatory Formation show, the dam's promise of clean hydro-power has been accompanied by an interconnected assemblage of crises linking together the threat of methylmercury poisoning with catastrophic flooding and cultural genocide for people living near the dam, and unmanageable public debt, suppression of alternative energy and threats to affordable domestic heat and electricity for everyone else. Its planning and development have involved the weakening of public regulatory bodies and the creation of a more privatized and less publicly accountable crown corporation overseeing the operation. Muskrat Falls: How a Mega-Dam Became a Predatory Formation offers a multi-dimensional analysis of the social, political and environmental problems the hydroelectric project has caused. It covers issues including Indigenous resistance to the dam; the politics and economics of the project; the role of journalism and social media in covering the event; controversy about the geophysical stability of the dam and interviews people living under threat of flooding and methylmercury poisoning downstream. The volume also contains original artwork and photography about the dam and fictional prose about life in the area around the Falls. Muskrat Falls will be of interest to local readers trying to understand how the dam will change life in the province and to anyone trying to understand and respond to any of the very many other similar, crisis-ridden energy and infrastructure projects being built around the world now. The book provides a rich case study of a crisis for scholars and students interested in areas such as energy studies, environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, critical infrastructure studies, and Canadian studies."--
Book Synopsis Silenced Rivers by : Patrick McCully
Download or read book Silenced Rivers written by Patrick McCully and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2001-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entirely updated in the light of the recent World Commission on Dams Report, and responding to it, this new edition of Patrick McCully's now classic study shows why large dams have become such a controversial technology in both industrialized and developing countries. The book explains the history and politics of dam building worldwide and shows why large dams have become so controversial. It details the ecological and human impacts of large dams, and shows how the 'national interest' argument is used to legitimize uneconomic and unjust projects which benefit elites while impoverishing tens of millions, describes the technical, safety and economic problems of dam technology, the structure of the international dam-building industry, and the role played by international banks and aid agencies. It tells the story of the rapid growth of the international anti-dam movement, and recounts some of the most important anti-dam campaigns around the world. McCully shows how the dam lobby and governments have reacted to criticism by cosmetic 'greening' of the dam-building process, and through state repression outlines the alternatives to dams, and argues that their replacement by less destructive alternatives requires the opening up of the industry's practices to public scrutiny.
Download or read book Deadbeat Dams written by Daniel P. Beard and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Beard is the former Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and knows the inside story of the waste of taxpayer money. The Bureau is responsible for building and operating water projects across the West, such as Hoover, Glen Canyon and Grand Coulee Dams.
Book Synopsis The Dams and Water Management Systems of Minoan Pseira by : Philip P. Betancourt
Download or read book The Dams and Water Management Systems of Minoan Pseira written by Philip P. Betancourt and published by INSTAP Academic Press. This book was released on 2012-12-31 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excavations at the Bronze Age seaport on Pseira Island uncovered the remains of sophisticated water retention systems that included the addition of retaining walls to prevent erosion, massive dams with associated reservoirs, and small check-dams to ravines that reached over one hundred meters in length in order to control water runoff and make it available for human use. Agriculture was one of the cornerstones of the Bronze Age Cretan economy, and it is no surprise that the ancient inhabitants of the island went to great lengths to control water runoff and make it available for human use. Despite the application of traditional archaeological survey methods, the full extent of the water management systems was not understood fully as the island's rugged topography prevented intensive and thorough survey of many places. The use of a differential Global Positioning System (dGPS) unit provided the opportunity to take a fresh look at the evidence for water management on the island. The results of this study contribute substantial amounts of new information on the little known subject of Minoan water conservation and control.
Book Synopsis Upstream by : National Research Council
Download or read book Upstream written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1996-08-17 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of salmon to the Pacific Northwestâ€"economic, recreational, symbolicâ€"is enormous. Generations ago, salmon were abundant from central California through Idaho, Oregon, and Washington to British Columbia and Alaska. Now they have disappeared from about 40 percent of their historical range. The decline in salmon numbers has been lamented for at least 100 years, but the issue has become more widespread and acute recently. The Endangered Species Act has been invoked, federal laws have been passed, and lawsuits have been filed. More than $1 billion has been spent to improve salmon runsâ€"and still the populations decline. In this new volume a committee with diverse expertise explores the complications and conflicts surrounding the salmon problemâ€"starting with available data on the status of salmon populations and an illustrative case study from Washington state's Willapa Bay. The book offers specific recommendations for salmon rehabilitation that take into account the key role played by genetic variability in salmon survival and the urgent need for habitat protection and management of fishing. The committee presents a comprehensive discussion of the salmon problem, with a wealth of informative graphs and charts and the right amount of historical perspective to clarify today's issues, including: Salmon biology and geographyâ€"their life's journey from fresh waters to the sea and back again to spawn, and their interaction with ecosystems along the way. The impacts of human activitiesâ€"grazing, damming, timber, agriculture, and population and economic growth. Included is a case study of Washington state's Elwha River dam removal project. Values, attitudes, and the conflicting desires for short-term economic gain and long-term environmental health. The committee traces the roots of the salmon problem to the extractive philosophy characterizing management of land and water in the West. The impact of hatcheries, which were introduced to build fish stocks but which have actually harmed the genetic variability that wild stocks need to survive. This book offers something for everyone with an interest in the salmon issueâ€"policymakers and regulators in the United States and Canada; environmental scientists; environmental advocates; natural resource managers; commercial, tribal, and recreational fishers; and concerned residents of the Pacific Northwest.
