High‐resolution mapping of the world's reservoirs and dams for sustainable river‐flow management

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment - Tập 9 Số 9 - Trang 494-502 - 2011
Bernhard Lehner1, Catherine Reidy Liermann2, Carmen Revenga3, Charles J Vörösmarty4, B M Fekete4, Philippe Crouzet5, Petra Döll6, Marcel Endejan7, Karen Frenken8, Jun Magome9, Christer Nilsson10, James Robertson3, Raimund Rödel11, Nikolai Sindorf12, Dominik Wisser13
1Department of Geography, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2University of Washington, Seattle, WA
3The Nature Conservancy; Arlington VA
4The CUNY Environmental Cross-Roads Initiative, City University of New York, New York, NY
5European Environment Agency, Copenhagen, Denmark
6University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
7Global Water System Project, International Project Office, Bonn, Germany
8Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy
9Univ. of Yamanashi, Yamanashi, Japan
10Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
11University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
12Conservation Science Program, World Wildlife Fund, Washington, DC
13Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham, NH

Tóm tắt

Despite the recognized importance of reservoirs and dams, global datasets describing their characteristics and geographical distribution are largely incomplete. To enable advanced assessments of the role and effects of dams within the global river network and to support strategies for mitigating ecohydrological and socioeconomic costs, we introduce here the spatially explicit and hydrologically linked Global Reservoir and Dam database (GRanD). As of early 2011, GRanD contains information regarding 6862 dams and their associated reservoirs, with a total storage capacity of 6197 km3. On the basis of these records, we estimate that about 16.7 million reservoirs larger than 0.01 ha – with a combined storage capacity of approximately 8070 km3 – may exist worldwide, increasing Earth's terrestrial surface water area by more than 305 000 km2. We find that 575 900 river kilometers, or 7.6% of the world's rivers with average flows above 1 cubic meter per second (m3 s−1), are affected by a cumulative upstream reservoir capacity that exceeds 2% of their annual flow; the impact is highest for large rivers with average flows above 1000 m3 s−1, of which 46.7% are affected. Finally, a sensitivity analysis suggests that smaller reservoirs have substantial impacts on the spatial extent of flow alterations despite their minor role in total reservoir capacity.

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Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

Tập 9 Số 9

494-502

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