dams

Dams are often built to control floods, but on certain kinds of rivers they may make big deluges worse, a new study finds. The finding suggests river managers might need to rethink their flood control strategies on silty and sandy lowland rivers. “It’s a counterintuitive finding,” says Gordon Grant, a hydrologist and geomorphologist with the U.S. Forest Service who was not involved with the work. “What this provocative paper is showing us is that we don’t fully understand” how…

An overview of the study areas, applied approaches, and results of the reservoir storage. Credit: SUTD China's dams along the Upper Mekong, or Lancang, are often blamed as the main cause of recent droughts in the downstream regions. Yet, it is challenging to corroborate these claims, since China has not been releasing detailed data on how its big dams in the Lancang are operated. Using data from satellite images and…