2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
5/24/2018 | 11:45 AM - 12:00 PM | DAMMING THE AMAZON: EVALUATING TRADEOFFS BETWEEN HYDROPOWER AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES USING A COMPUTATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY APPROACH | 430 B
DAMMING THE AMAZON: EVALUATING TRADEOFFS BETWEEN HYDROPOWER AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES USING A COMPUTATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY APPROACH
The rapid proliferation of hydropower is a critical issue threatening biodiverse regions such as the Amazon Basin, where >300 new dams have been proposed. While environmental assessments have considered individual dams, little attention has been paid to tradeoffs between hydropower production and portfolios of ecosystem services for different dam network configurations. Assessing spatial configurations of dams in rapidly developing regions is especially challenged by the lack of data on ecological, hydrological, and socioeconomic processes. Requisite with the complexity of the Amazon system, we are implementing a computational framework for evaluating tradeoffs between hydropower and different ecosystem services including floodplain fisheries, river connectivity, sediment export, and biodiversity. We find that optimal hydropower dam location choices based on single criteria contrast sharply with those considering multiple objectives. For example, some dams rarely contained in optimal solutions based on a single criterion such as river connectivity, are always found in optimal solutions when suites of ecosystem service criteria are considered. Clearly, planning for Amazon hydropower requires decision tools with adequate sophistication to navigate the multiple tradeoffs between energy and a diversity of ecosystem services.
- Amazon Andes
- Hydropower
- Trade-offs
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Presenters/Authors
Alexander Flecker
(), Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, asf3@cornell.edu;
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Roosevelt García-Villacorta
(), Cornell University, rg676@cornell.edu;
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Qinru Shi
(), Cornell University, qs63@cornell.edu;
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Suresh Sethi
(), Cornell University, suresh.sethi@cornell.edu;
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Scott Steinschneider
(), Cornell University, ss3378@cornell.edu;
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Bruce Forsberg
(), National Institute of Amazon Research, Manaus, AM, Brazil, brforsberg@gmail.com;
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Elizabeth P Anderson
(), Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA, eanderson8@gmail.com;
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Jonathan Gomes Selman
(), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, jgs8@stanford.edu;
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Carla Gomes
(), Cornell University, gomes@cs.cornell.edu;
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the Amazon Dams CompSust Working Group
(), Cornell University, amazondamscompsust@gmail.com;
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