#fishpassage — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

The #Oceans Are Missing Their #Rivers

For billions of years, rivers connected continents to the #sea. Then we came along.

By Erica Gies May 3, 2023

"In many places, the great culprit is the dam: a wall of concrete and stone bisecting a river, diverting its energy and water to human use. There are 58,000 'big dams'—50 feet high or taller—around the globe, with another 3,700 more planned, mostly in lower-income countries in Asia and South America.

"Many of the harms caused by dams are well-documented. They block fish passage and starve subsistence fishers; radically alter natural river regimes and aquatic creatures’ lifecycles; and flood forests, wetlands, villages, and historical sites. (They’re also less climate-friendly1 and reliable2 than is widely believed.) Now scientists are describing another impact that has received relatively little attention but appears to also be profound: Dams block #sediment-carrying river pulses into the ocean."

#Hydropower #QuebecHydro #Dams #Anthropocene #Rivers #FishPassage #Salmon #Flooding