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Abstract Dams have been a fundamental part of the U.S. national agenda over the past two hundred years. Recently, however, dam removal has emerged as a strategy for addressing aging, obsolete infrastructure and more than 1,100 dams have been removed since the 1970s. However, only 130 of these removals had any ecological or geomorphic assessments, and fewer than half of those included before- and after-removal (BAR) studies. In addition, this growing, but limited collection of dam-removal studies is limited to distinct landscape settings. We conducted a meta-analysis to compare the landscape context of existing and removed dams and assessed the biophysical responses to dam removal for 63 BAR studies. The highest...
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Abstract Dam removal is widely used as an approach for river restoration in the United States. The increase in dam removals--particularly large dams--and associated dam-removal studies over the last few decades motivated a working group at the USGS John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis to review and synthesize available studies of dam removals and their findings. Based on dam removals thus far, some general conclusions have emerged: (1) physical responses are typically fast, with the rate of sediment erosion largely dependent on sediment characteristics and dam-removal strategy; (2) ecological responses to dam removal differ among the affected upstream, downstream, and reservoir reaches; (3) dam removal...
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Note: For the latest version of the American Rivers Dam Removal Database see https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5234068. This is a dynamic collection of dam removals shared with the USGS from American Rivers as part of a collaboration on the USGS National Dam Removal Science Database and the Dam Removal Information Portal. The query, provided by the included ScienceBase web link, retrieves dam removals from the Spatial Feature Registry, a resource of items that have been verified for spatial accuracy. The USGS receives periodic updates on American Rivers dam removal records and runs the records through a quality control process to align them with our system and enter them into the Spatial Feature Registry. Items...
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Aging infrastructure coupled with growing interest in river restoration has driven a dramatic increase in the practice of dam removal. With this increase, there has been a proliferation of studies that assess the physical and ecological responses of rivers to these removals. As more dams are considered for removal, scientific information from these dam‐removal studies will increasingly be called upon to inform decisions about whether, and how best, to bring down dams. This raises a critical question: what is the current state of dam‐removal science in the United States? To explore the status, trends, and characteristics of dam‐removal research in the U.S., we searched the scientific literature and extracted basic...
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The removal of dams has increased in recent years due to aging infrastructure, changing societal needs, and modern safety standards. Where possibilities for river restoration, or improved safety, exceed the benefits of retaining a dam, removal is more often being considered a viable option. Yet, as this is a relatively new development in the history of river management, science is just beginning to guide our understanding of the physical and ecological implications of dam removal. Ultimately, however, deciding if and how to remove aging dams should be guided by “lessons learned” from previous studies that have examined the ecosystem effects of dam removal. We are creating a dynamic database that organizes published...
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