Dams: Ecological Impacts and Management

Dam construction goes back in human history for more than 5000 years (e.g., Sadd el-Kafara dam in Egypt for flood protection), but most of the world’s existing dams have been built after the Second World War as consequence or basis of economic development. Today, there are about 6000 existing or planned large hydropower dams (>15 m height) worldwide (Zarfl et al. 2014) and an uncountable number of small dams. For example, with more than 5000 mostly small hydropower plants, Austria is one of the countries with the highest density of hydropower dams (about 6 dams per 100 km2, Wagner et al. 2015). Downstream flows are mainly altered by large dams, e.g., there are 654 reservoirs with storage capacities ≥0.5 km3 (Lehner and Doll 2004). Damming rivers currently stores the equivalent of 15% of global annual river runoff (Likens 2010). As a result, 48% of rivers (expressed as river volume) globally are moderately to severely impacted by either flow regulation, fragmentation, or both.

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