Research Project

When the research project of a environmental issue was presented to us, I immediately thought back to an issue that interested when I took environmental geography. I would like to research the negative effects dams bring upon the environment. Dams provide humans with a number of benefits, but I feel the negative side of dams is missed by the general population. I could still research the positives things with dams to do a side by side comparison with the negative effects. When dams are constructed, they create a reservoir upstream from where the dam was built. This reservoir can be helpful for providing humans with water in areas where water is scarce. However, the reservoir also floods the habitats of wildlife who lived close to the water. In the case of the Hoover dam on the Colorado River, the reservoir flooded numerous caves and other beautiful sites that had been there for thousands of years. I know there was talk in the 20th Century of building a dam that would flood part of the Grand Canyon. The general population rose up over this and it was never built. In China, the Three Gorges has been called the Chinese equivalent to the Grand Canyon and a dam was built on that. What is the real cost in losing the beauty and wonder of nature for ultimately short term gains?

With dams in general, the migration of fish and other life in the water is damaged. They can no longer move freely up and down the water. This has affected the fish populations that need to move up stream to reach breeding groups. Given, humans have stepped in and actually captured these fish and used trucks to transport them upstream for breeding. The reservoirs also kill over any plant life that was previously there. This lack of plants to consume carbon dioxide causes more of the greenhouse gas to affect temperatures. The dams and their reservoirs also cause water to release methane into the atmosphere as they lack enough oxygen.

Probably the most troubling issue I feel with dams is that dams sometimes stop the water from ever reaching its mouth. The ecosystem at the mouth is then destroyed by the lack of water. Animal and plant life dependent on this water die off. The ecosystem is then changed to look more like a desert.

I do have some more research I have found just by my first looking, but I feel this is enough to give a decent introduction of what I am looking into researching. I suppose the big issue I am looking at is how dams change the surrounding ecosystems.