Dams without enough sustainable water supply

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i am interested to know what percentage (just roughly) of medium large dams in the world are without enough water supply to be sustainable and what is the reason? Is it poor hydrological calculations due to droughts and climate change or  or anyone have examples in the your country?

Calculations for inflow to dam site based on previous 20-30 years of data is how reliable?

i am asking this question because there are so many dams here which are without water for a long time after construction. So can i guest this poor hydrological calculations or is this phenomenon happening all over the world?

Any supporting documents or data that you can suggest much appreciated.

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10 Answers

  1. You will get some of the reasons - why the water in natural drainage channels like rivers and dams do not reach the dams and they  do not get filled in upto the full tank level. Please read my article " Catchment areas and their preservation" available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w-gsKoiKhe0Utctpyi1Ie2fs8W2DAkxC/view?usp=sharing . No permission is required to download this article. You can download it and comment.

  2. If changes in the water flow due to the filling of dams are observed, then this is another of the obvious signs of climate change. And this change depends on our consumption of water. Mankind has changed circles The quantity, quality and frequency of water turnover reaches critical values. Evaporation has changed and their large part has been transformed into vaporization of the artificial type. These are evaporations from arable land, water bodies, landfills, asphalt and technological processes. The volumes of such evaporation have reached a critical level. That is why natural disasters occur, climate change. The processes of filling the rivers, the waters of the preserved waters, the rise in the level of the oceans - this is the result of interrelated phenomena. The more we set up dams, the greater the artificial evaporation, the more disproportion in precipitation.

    You can see more on my page. The proposed hypothesis has data from open sources, but more specific studies are needed. Therefore, I wish to take part in the proof of the stated provisions. It is necessary to find research or conduct them in the field of the quality of evaporations and their formation to create cloud structures. And summarize the statistics on water circulation. A dozen articles have been published in separate editions. There are implications for the conference set. I do not have time. And it is not able to travel all over the world without knowing English. Therefore, I invite everyone who can take part in providing and explaining the Hypothesis and promoting a new strategy for saving life on the planet. Now you need to register and speak in Las Vegas, in Dublin, in Kuala Lumpu Re. Maybe there will be new supporters of these cities? I will provide both nstruzhat and full of help.

  3. Appreciate all the comments already made.  I have just one small issue to raise.  Usually if we have adequate hydrological data, we tend to carry out a regression analysis on all of the data and use that to assess the safe yield of a planned or existing reservoir.  However if we only analyse the extreme events in the historic data rather than all the data, you are likely to find that the assessment will give a different prediction of particularly streamflow deficits than when using all the data.  This then leads to an inaccurate risk assessment of low flow periods within the extreme events.  This is even more relevant in areas subject to significant climate change rainfall occurrences. 

  4. Если замечены изменения стока вод по наполнению плотин, то это еще один из явных признаков изменения климата. И это изменение зависит от нашего потребления воды. Человечество изменило круговорот воды. Количество, качество и периодичность оборота воды достигают критических значений. Испарения изменились и большая их часть превратилась в испарения искусственного типа. Это испарения от пашни, водохранилищ, свалок, асфальта и от технологических процессов. Объемы таких испарений подошли к критическому уровню. Именно поэтому происходят стихийные бедствия, изменение климата. Процессы заполняемости рек, водохранилищ, рост уровня океанов  -  все это результаты взаимосвязанных явлений. Чем больше мы настроим плотин, тем больше искусственных испарений, тем больше диспропорций в осадках.

    Подробнее можете посмотреть на моей странице.  Предлагаемая Гипотеза  имеет данные из открытых источников, однако необходимы более конкретные исследования. Поэтому приглашаю принять участие в доказательстве изложенных положений. Необходимо найти исследования или провести их в области качества испарений и их влияние на создание облачных структур.. И обобщить статистику по кругооборотам воды. Опубликовано десяток статей в раздичных изданиях. Имеются приглашения на множество конференций. Я не успеваю. Да и не в состоянии ездить по всему миру, не зная английского языка. Поэтому приглашаю всех кто может принять участие в доказательстве и объснении Гипотезы и продвижении новой стратегии спасения жизни на планете. Сейчас надо регистрироваться и выступать в Лас Вегасе, в Дублине, в Куала Лумпуре. Может быть там выступят новые сторонники этих городов? Я обеспечу инструктаж и полномочия.

  5. Interesting thread. The responses to date leave me wondering about the data side of the question.  As noted, there are both historic planning methods issues, and also need to seriously re-evaluate relative to climate change.  

    There is a tension between these in that the choice of long term baselines implies that you are smoothing out recent notable changes in precipitation regimes.  For the US, this is pretty well summarized in the National Climate Assessment here:

    https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/7/

    But there are some interesting datasets and tools out there which could be used to construct an unbiassed answer at trans-national scale.

    Global Reservoir and Dam (GRanD) database

    http://www.gwsp.org/fileadmin/downloads/GRanD_Technical_Documentation_v1_1.pdf

    WorldClim - Global Climate Data
    Free climate data for ecological modeling and GIS at 1km downscale in GIS formats (also available on Google Earth Engine)

    http://worldclim.org

    Global "Hand" flow accumulation over terrain dataset

    https://code.earthengine.google.com/ac07d0488c6de32f35372c3a2491f35a

    I don't know if anyone has taken the time to start piecing this together.  In theory, you could use the datasets above to look systematically at historic and projected future changes to the watersheds feeding at least a few thousand important dams.

  6. Happy New Year !

    One of the question about ”Safety Clean Water ? "...one of example at JAP, ...we think about "The rain (nature pure exist water)". ...I hope, Think about the Earth nature system. (^^)!m/... I think "Dam" is "damn"...I wish "Make the Forest (river head forest)".

    http://tenbou.nies.go.jp/envgis_explain/acid_rain/content.html

    https://www.epa.gov/acidrain

    1 Comment

    1. Torii-san.  Do you have English translation for the DATA sheets link.  I would like to speak with you. Your viewpoint is quite sound. Language clarity only please.  Bokuno namaewa Guy desu.  skype: guy_mcgowen arigato!

  7. I will not go in data collection and examples. I will just like to tell my own experience in this regard. About one hundred year back, there was no human intervention in unrestricted flow of water in drainage channels like rivers and their tributaries. With development works like railways, roads, building construction, and other construction work, human interference in natural flow of water in natural drainage channels was badly influenced.  Mining work and mines particularly deep mines have very badly affected the natural flow of water in rivers.  The ever increasing population and greed of rich and influential persons in society always wanted to have their houses by the side of a lake or sea shore, more particularly within a lake at its centre.  As the population of the world has ever increasing trend, the submergence area of the dams is being used for construction of buildings both for commercial and residential purposes, forcing the government either abandon the dam or not to fill it upto FTL. In India thousands of village dams have disappeared since independence, as per record. To save the unrestrited flow of water in natural rivers and their tributaries, I have written a paper titled       " Catchment Areas and Their preservation" available on google drive freely with this link -  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w-gsKoiKhe0Utctpyi1Ie2fs8W2DAkxC/view?usp=sharing   . If you find any difficulty in downloading the paper, you can write to me at yagrawal@bsnl.in .

  8. Hello Sultan Salahuddin,

    You are asking some excellent and pertinent questions here!  There are many reasons why dams and other water infrastructure are inadequate to prevent water shortages. A primary reason, as you suggest, is that an insufficient period of record for river flows is being considered, or that drought periods within a historical record were not given sufficient attention. Additionally, there are few existing dams in the world that were designed with adequate attention to climate change forecasts -- we are now learning that climate change is leading to lessened river flows and increased consumptive demands in many regions.  But most importantly, if consumptive uses of water within the source watershed area above the dam are not adequately controlled or restrained, upstream water users can deplete the river flows to the point where not enough water ends up flowing into the dam/reservoir.  

    These issues are very well illustrated by the Colorado River in the Western US. Even though the big dams on the river were designed to store four full years of the average river flows, the consumptive use of water upstream of these dams has severely depleted the inflow to the reservoirs and the water levels in the reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell are now plummeting rapidly.

    There have been many good papers written about the Colorado River situation, but if you're interested in a more global and general treatment of these issues, you might find my book "Chasing Water" to be of interest.

  9. Agreed! Government interference and lack of qualified people makes their info short sighted and ultimately useless. For the lack of water itself the repurposing AND cleaning  of it would solve every ones problems. This infrastructure centralization  is the cause not the cure. You can increase the amount of water anywhere when you use Natures already perfect system.  Many desert countries have learned the secret to allow nature to take over the water increase to the area. All you need to add is microbes and organic waste material.

  10. Dear Sultan Salahuddin 

    Happy  new  year.

    I dont know the percentage but I know the reason. The main reason is political pressure to technocrats . Sometimes politicans force  technocrats to find the dam project proposal  feasible with short term hydrological unreliable data. Result is obvious .

    Hydrological models and technics are  developed  enough to  make  dam's basin hydrological calculations precisely.  Of course by using long term ( at least 40 years) relaible hydrometeorological data. But such studies need to take into account climate change effects  even though that is not main effect not to impound dam's reservoir in several cases for the time being  . These are mainly due to the political presssure and lack of reliable data except for some cases related with  climate change impact on basin hydrology.

    Dam's hydrology calculation reports can easily be available from several sources in internet.

     Best regards 

     Dursun Yıldız 

     

     

    1 Comment

    1. Excellent point. If no financial kickbacks then governments are slow to do.  You have pointed out again the main cause being "Centralization" and added to this Infrastructure with the costs of maintenance. In case anyone was wondering the decentralized solutions have been developed and are being ignored to make funding available for more infrastructure.  At a glance. To buy & install home system would take $4 Billion for the entire country. For redoing are decaying infrastructure would take (estimates vary) 8 to 12 Trillion.  Now you understand why the international organized crime society is fighting President Trumps Agenda.