NHI’s Executive Director, Gregory A. Thomas, authored a paper on Managing Infrastructure to Maintain Natural Flows in Developed Rivers that appears in a book entitled WATER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: FROM POLICY AND SCIENCE THROUGH TO IMPLEMENTATION. The book was edited by Horne, Webb, Stewardson, Richter and Acreman and recently published by Elsevier in August 2017.
River basin infrastructure impairs the natural functions in rivers and can cause the collapse of entire fisheries and ecosystems. There is an urgent need to develop and demonstrate options for siting, designing and operating such infrastructure – to reverse some of the damage of the past, and improve the environmental compatibility of the next generation of such dams, diversions and levees. This chapter describes techniques and tools for advancing those goals without forgoing the socio-economic benefits for which these structures are built. This task is urgent because hydropower development is surging in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with irrigation infrastructure soon to follow. The toolkit of water management innovations described in this chapter offers creative solutions to integrate considerations of biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, food security and livelihoods in the siting, design and operations of large hydraulic infrastructure projects.
This chapter (#21) on managing infrastructure to maintain natural flows in developed rivers, together with analytical tools for assessing the design and operation of major infrastructure projects for environmental sustainability, is available from NHI upon request to gat(at)n-h-i.org for educational use only. The entire book (Paperback ISBN: 9780128039076) may be ordered Elsevier.
