dams

A few years ago, a couple of Google employees reached out to a Minnesota scientist with an unusual proposal: What if they could teach computers to spot beaver habitats from space? "They wanted to know if I thought it was possible to find beaver wetlands from aerial imagery myself, and then if that could be scaled up with machine learning," Emily Fairfax, a University of Minnesota beaver researcher and assistant professor of geography, told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams.Fairfax knew that beavers' sprawling dams…

The arduous task of cleaning up from catastrophic flooding is underway across the Northeast after storms stretched the region's flood control systems nearly to the breaking point. As rising global temperatures make extreme storms more common, the nation's dams and reservoirs—crucial to keeping communities dry—are being tested. California and states along the Mississippi River have faced similar flood control…

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Heavy rainfall in the Northeast on June 9-11, 2023, generated widespread flooding, particularly in New York’s Hudson Valley and in Vermont. One major concern was the Wrightsville Dam, built in 1935 on the Winooski River north of Vermont’s capital city, Montpelier. The reservoir behind the dam rose to within 1 foot of the dam’s maximum storage capacity, prompting warnings that water could overtop the…

Members of a Canadian conservation organization are working on a project to increase biodiversity and healthy wetlands in British Columbia with the help of beavers. Ducks Unlimited Canada is mapping areas in the province where beavers can replace artificial dams once they've been decommissioned. "Beavers are a keystone species," said Jen Rogers, a master's student at Simon Fraser University working with Ducks Unlimited Canada. "They're considered ecosystem engineers.""The team is currently assessing areas across the…

A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 379, Issue 6627.Download PDF This story was produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. Soon after sunrise one warm day in September 2022, 26-year-old Josiel Pereira Juruna boards a small motorboat and sets out on the emerald-green waters of the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon. Accompanying him are biologist Cristiane Carneiro and…

Michael Arendt has spent his career on the water. After working his way up through the US Merchant Marines from deckhand to riverboat captain, he came ashore in 2001 to work as a lock and dam operator for the US Army Corps of Engineers. He now guides boats hauling anything from rocks to missiles through Alabama’s Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway, which connects Tennessee and Alabama to the Gulf of Mexico.Arendt enjoys the work and sees lock and dam operators as a crucial part of US transportation infrastructure and national…

A new study finds that when it comes to water quality in mountain watersheds, beaver dams can have a far greater influence than climate-driven, seasonal extremes in precipitation.As U.S. West warms, beavers will become a bigger boon to river water quality.As climate change worsens water quality and threatens ecosystems, the famous dams of beavers may help lessen the damage, according to a new study by Stanford University scientists and colleagues.The research, which will be published today (November 8) in the journal…

The figures might not add up now, but the amount of untapped energy available ought to be hard to ignore. Coles and his colleagues found that tidal stream power has the potential to meet 11 percent of the UK’s current annual electricity demand, or 11.5 gigawatts. But according to the trade association Renewable UK, only six projects are fully or partially operational, producing a total of 10.6 megawatts—or less than 0.1 percent of what’s said to be possible. Further projects with a capacity of 370 megawatts have been…

It takes a lot of water to make power. From spinning turbines to hydraulic fracturing to refining fuel, the flow of water is critical to the flow of electrons and heat. About 40 percent of water withdrawals — water taken out of groundwater or surface sources — in the United States go toward energy production. The large majority of that share is used to cool power plants. In turn, it requires energy to extract, purify, transport, and deliver water. So when temperatures rise and water levels drop, the energy sector gets…

During an intense heat wave, humans have a number of tools to stay cool, such as air conditioning, swimming pools, and ice cream. Wild animals, meanwhile, have beavers. Yes, beavers. These web-footed, fat-tailed amphibious rodents help countless other critters survive a heat wave. They not only drench certain landscapes in cold water but also help cool the air. They even make forests and grasslands less likely to burn. This is especially important right now. In the last two weeks, an oppressive heat wave has been…