2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

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5/24/2021 | 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM | HOW DO SMALL HYDROPOWER DAMS AFFECT NUTRIENT AND SEDIMENT TRANSPORT TO THE PANTANAL WETLAND OF BRAZIL? | Virtual Platform

HOW DO SMALL HYDROPOWER DAMS AFFECT NUTRIENT AND SEDIMENT TRANSPORT TO THE PANTANAL WETLAND OF BRAZIL?

Small hydropower (SHP) facilities are increasingly built around the world and are viewed as less environmentally harmful than larger dams. Numerous SHPs have been built, and many more are proposed, in rivers draining into the Pantanal, a world-renowned floodplain wetland. Upland tributaries transport nutrients and sediments into the Pantanal, thereby affecting geomorphological dynamics and biological productivity of downstream floodplains. This study presents measurements from upstream and downstream of 25–29 current facilities. In addition, a predictive model using artificial neural networks estimated the impact of building 80 future SHPs. Changes in nitrogen and phosphorus transport were usually undetectable, whereas more than half of current facilities retained suspended sediments. However, model predictions for proposed hydropower facilities, many on rivers with higher discharge and sediment loads, suggest significant reductions in overall nitrogen (8%), phosphorus (29%), and sediment (62%) transport. This study shows that building SHPs on sediment-rich rivers may prove problematic for the facilities as well as for downstream ecosystems, mainly because of sediment trapping. Several river systems should be excluded from hydropower development to maintain the nutrient and sediment supply to the Pantanal as well as to preserve migratory fish routes.

Nutrients
Conservation
Biogeochemistry

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Presenters/Authors

Stephen K. Hamilton (), Michigan State University, hamilton@kbs.msu.edu;