Building a better dam map

Global collaboration provides explicit database of reservoirs and dams for sustainable river-flow management

2011-06-03

(Press-News.org) Humans have been building reservoirs and dams for thousands of years. Over the past few decades, their construction has spiked as our need to harness water – critical in flood control, irrigation, recreation, navigation and the creation of hydroelectric power – has grown. And while dams and reservoirs have important benefits, they can also be disruptive and costly to both humans and the environment.

A close assessment of critical environmental and social tradeoffs associated with dams and reservoirs within the global river network has been impossible because the data describing their location, size and purpose have been incomplete and inadequate.

That is, until now.

The culmination of a four-year collaboration by a team of scientists from around the globe, coordinated by the Global Water System Project and led by McGill University's Bernhard Lehner, has produced the Global Reservoir and Dam database (GRanD), a unique, geographically explicit, high-resolution global database of large dams and reservoirs.

"Thorough continental assessments and ongoing sustainable dam management and planning haven't been possible due to a lack of data. We've only been able to look at dams on a case-by-case basis," explained Lehner. "The Three Gorges Dam, for example, has been heavily investigated, but no one ever included the 100-plus large dams upstream from it in a single impact assessment. Now we can look at all of them at the same time to figure out what the combined effect is. This gives us a holistic view of a whole river basin."

According to the paper published on May 31 in Frontiers in Ecology, GRanD currently contains information regarding 6,862 dams and their associated reservoirs with a total storage capacity of 6,197km3. Based on this figure, the authors estimate that about 16.7 million reservoirs larger than 0.01ha may exist worldwide. The team also found that nearly 50 per cent of large rivers – that is, those with an average flow of more than 1000m3 per second – are affected by large dams and reservoirs worldwide. GRanD data includes (in most cases) the dam and reservoir names, spatial co-ordinates, construction year, surface area, storage capacity, dam height main purpose and elevation.

### GRanD is freely available for non-commercial use at www.gwsp.org/85.html

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New type of MRSA in hospitalized patients probably of animal origin

2011-06-03

WASHINGTON, DC -- June 2, 2011 -- A distinctly new type of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that is not detected by traditional genetic screening methods has been discovered in patients in Irish hospitals according to research to be published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. These findings provide significant insights into how new MRSA strains emerge and highlight the potential for the transmission of infectious agents from animals to humans. MRSA is a significant cause of hospital- and community-acquired infection worldwide. MRSA ...

Wagner & Wagner Joins Environmental Alliance

2011-06-03

Wagner & Wagner, Attorneys at Law, is doing more to help its community by making a commitment to improve its environmental profile. By joining the B2B Green Alliance, Wagner & Wagner hopes to promote awareness of eco-friendly business practices for lawyers. The B2B Green Alliance is part of Page 1 Green Solutions, an environmental commitment program sponsored by web marketing firm Page 1 Solutions. Page 1 Solutions strives to reduce its environmental impact not only by following eco-conscious practices in office but also by encouraging its clients to pursue ...

With feedlot manure, it pays to be precise

2011-06-03

This release is available in Spanish. The same precision farming techniques that work with crops can work with manure management on cattle feedlots, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Agricultural engineers Roger Eigenberg and Bryan Woodbury and their colleagues with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Clay Center, Neb., map the distribution of manure on the surface of feedlots and the flow of liquid manure in rain runoff. This research could lead to both precision harvesting of manure and also precision application of manure ...

Pulling a fast one

2011-06-03

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Do those lightening fast disclaimers at the end of radio and television advertisements scare you away or simply seem like white noise required by regulatory agencies? According to Northwestern University and Wake Forest University research now online in the Journal of Consumer Research, fast disclaimers can give consumers the impression that an advertiser is trying to conceal information. However, trusted brands (versus trust-unknown or not-trusted brands) are immune to the adverse effects of fast disclaimers. "Speak slowly or carry a trusted brand," ...

Man Exonerated After 14 Years Gets No Support from Supreme Court

2011-06-03

It is not certain where John Thompson was one fateful night in December 1984, but one thing is clear: He was not robbing three children in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. Thompson's innocence did not prevent the District Attorney's Office in Orleans Parish from building a case against him for the robbery, or from failing to turn over blood evidence to the defense--a failure that would taint his ability to accurately defend himself against charges of robbery and murder. The District Attorney's Office, headed by Harry Connick, Sr., tried and ultimately convicted Thompson of ...

Leakage of private information from popular websites is common, new study finds

2011-06-03

WORCESTER, Mass. – A study of more than 100 popular websites used by tens of millions of people has found that three quarters directly leak either private information or users' unique identifiers to third-party tracking sites. The study, co-authored by Craig Wills, professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), also demonstrated how the leakage of private information by many sites, including email addresses, physical addresses, and even the configuration of a user's web browser—so-called browser fingerprints—could permit tracking sites to link many ...

ACSM: Stronger hips improved running mechanics, lessened knee pain

2011-06-03

Hip strengthening exercises performed by female runners not only significantly reduced patellofemoral pain -- a common knee pain experienced by runners -- but they also improved the runners' gaits, according to Indiana University motion analysis expert Tracy Dierks. "The results indicate that the strengthening intervention was successful in reducing pain, which corresponded to improved mechanics," said Dierks, associate professor of physical therapy in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. "The leg was ...

A promising new approach to autoimmune diseases

2011-06-03

BOSTON – Researchers from Harvard Medical School and MIT have developed a new approach for identifying the "self" proteins targeted in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. In a paper published in Nature Biotechnology, H. Benjamin Larman and colleagues showed that errant immune responses which mistakenly target the body's own proteins rather than foreign invaders can now be examined in molecular detail. Further research could lead to new insights into the exact causes of these debilitating autoimmune disorders. The results ...

Depression: Not just for adults

2011-06-03

From a distance, Callie (not her real name) appears to be a normal if quiet 5-year-old girl. But when faced with a toy that blows large soap bubbles—an activity that makes the vast majority of kindergarteners squeal and leap with delight—she is uninterested in popping the bubbles or taking a turn with the gun herself. When offered dolls or other toys, she is equally unmoved. When groups of children congregate to play, Callie does not join them. Even at home, she is quiet and withdrawn. While Callie's mother explains this lack of interest in play as simple "shyness," researchers ...

Want to solve a problem? Don't just use your brain, but your body, too

2011-06-03

When we've got a problem to solve, we don't just use our brains but the rest of our bodies, too. The connection, as neurologists know, is not uni-directional. Now there's evidence from cognitive psychology of the same fact. "Being able to use your body in problem solving alters the way you solve the problems," says University of Wisconsin psychology professor Martha Alibali. "Body movements are one of the resources we bring to cognitive processes." These conclusions, of a new study by Alibali and colleagues—Robert C. Spencer, also at the University of Wisconsin, and Lucy ...

The percentage of women who went without a Pap smear for cervical cancer screening increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, from 19% in 2019 to 26% in 2022

Building a better dam map

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: