TY - JOUR
T1 - River dam impacts on biogeochemical cycling
AU - Maavara, Taylor
AU - Chen, Qiuwen
AU - Van Meter, Kimberly
AU - Brown, Lee E.
AU - Zhang, Jianyun
AU - Ni, Jinren
AU - Zarfl, Christiane
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2020/2
Y1 - 2020/2
N2 - The increased use of hydropower is currently driving the greatest surge in global dam construction since the mid-20th century, meaning that most major rivers on Earth are now dammed. Dams impede the flow of essential nutrients, including carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen and silicon, along river networks, leading to enhanced nutrient transformation and elimination. Increased nutrient retention via sedimentation or gaseous elimination in dammed reservoirs influences downstream terrestrial and coastal environments. Reservoirs can also become hotspots for greenhouse gas emission, potentially impacting how ‘green’ hydropower is compared with fossil-fuel burning. In this Review, we discuss how damming changes nutrient biogeochemistry along river networks, as well as its broader environmental consequences. The influences of construction and management practices on nutrient elimination, the emission of greenhouse gases and potential remobilization of legacy nutrients are also examined. We further consider how regulating hydraulic residence time and environmental flows (or e-flows) can be used in planning and operation from dam conception to deconstruction.
AB - The increased use of hydropower is currently driving the greatest surge in global dam construction since the mid-20th century, meaning that most major rivers on Earth are now dammed. Dams impede the flow of essential nutrients, including carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen and silicon, along river networks, leading to enhanced nutrient transformation and elimination. Increased nutrient retention via sedimentation or gaseous elimination in dammed reservoirs influences downstream terrestrial and coastal environments. Reservoirs can also become hotspots for greenhouse gas emission, potentially impacting how ‘green’ hydropower is compared with fossil-fuel burning. In this Review, we discuss how damming changes nutrient biogeochemistry along river networks, as well as its broader environmental consequences. The influences of construction and management practices on nutrient elimination, the emission of greenhouse gases and potential remobilization of legacy nutrients are also examined. We further consider how regulating hydraulic residence time and environmental flows (or e-flows) can be used in planning and operation from dam conception to deconstruction.
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U2 - 10.1038/s43017-019-0019-0
DO - 10.1038/s43017-019-0019-0
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85082737236
SN - 2662-138X
VL - 1
SP - 103
EP - 116
JO - Nature Reviews Earth and Environment
JF - Nature Reviews Earth and Environment
IS - 2
ER -