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Damming the rivers of the Amazon basin

More than a hundred hydropower dams have already been built in the Amazon basin and numerous proposals for further dam constructions are under consideration. The accumulated negative environmental effects of existing dams and proposed dams, if constructed, will trigger massive hydrophysical and biotic disturbances that will affect the Amazon basin's floodplains, estuary and sediment plume. We introduce a Dam Environmental Vulnerability Index to quantify the current and potential impacts of dams in the basin. The scale of foreseeable environmental degradation indicates the need for collective action among nations and states to avoid cumulative, far-reaching impacts. We suggest institutional innovations to assess and avoid the likely impoverishment of Amazon rivers.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/625952
Date14 June 2017
CreatorsLatrubesse, Edgardo M., Arima, Eugenio Y., Dunne, Thomas, Park, Edward, Baker, Victor R., d’Horta, Fernando M., Wight, Charles, Wittmann, Florian, Zuanon, Jansen, Baker, Paul A., Ribas, Camila C., Norgaard, Richard B., Filizola, Naziano, Ansar, Atif, Flyvbjerg, Bent, Stevaux, Jose C.
ContributorsUniversity of Arizona, Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences
PublisherNATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle
Rights© 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.
Relationhttp://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature22333

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