Session E4: Basins that Work for Fish and Energy: Hydropower Planning for Fish Passage in Tropical Rivers
Location
Groningen, The Netherlands
Event Website
http://fishpassage.umass.edu/
Start Date
23-6-2015 11:20 AM
End Date
23-6-2015 11:35 AM
Description
Abstract:
Global hydropower capacity is projected to approximately double in the next several decades, powered by thousands of new dams. Most of this development will take place in South America, Africa, and Asia (China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia). While providing valuable energy to meet growing demands, this expansion of hydropower threatens the diversity and productivity of fish in many tropical rivers, including several river basins where fish provide the primary source of protein to rural communities and larger regional populations. Maintaining the movement of migratory fish within basins undergoing development is a key challenge for governments and those who plan, design, and manage dams. While improving fish passage at dams is critically important, this session will highlight how the spatial arrangement of dams in a river basin impacts fish movement through a channel network. The applied focus of the panel will be maintaining fish passage and migration within river basins that are undergoing development, with an emphasis on tropical rivers. The panel will review current examples of fish passage that illustrate the need for a basin-scale approach, tools for assessing connectivity of different dam configurations, and examine the potential for system-scale planning for dam siting to produced more balanced outcomes between hydroelectric energy and fish migration.
Session E4: Basins that Work for Fish and Energy: Hydropower Planning for Fish Passage in Tropical Rivers
Groningen, The Netherlands
Abstract:
Global hydropower capacity is projected to approximately double in the next several decades, powered by thousands of new dams. Most of this development will take place in South America, Africa, and Asia (China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia). While providing valuable energy to meet growing demands, this expansion of hydropower threatens the diversity and productivity of fish in many tropical rivers, including several river basins where fish provide the primary source of protein to rural communities and larger regional populations. Maintaining the movement of migratory fish within basins undergoing development is a key challenge for governments and those who plan, design, and manage dams. While improving fish passage at dams is critically important, this session will highlight how the spatial arrangement of dams in a river basin impacts fish movement through a channel network. The applied focus of the panel will be maintaining fish passage and migration within river basins that are undergoing development, with an emphasis on tropical rivers. The panel will review current examples of fish passage that illustrate the need for a basin-scale approach, tools for assessing connectivity of different dam configurations, and examine the potential for system-scale planning for dam siting to produced more balanced outcomes between hydroelectric energy and fish migration.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/fishpassage_conference/2015/June23/77
Comments
Presenting Author Bio: Jeff Opperman, Director of Sustainable Hydropower Strategy and Lead Scientist, Great Rivers Partnership, has been working to protect rivers and lakes for nearly 15 years. He has provided strategic and scientific guidance to freshwater conservation projects across the United States as well as in China, Africa and Latin America. Through scientific research and collaborations and technical support to field projects, Jeff focuses on improving the environmental sustainability of hydropower and protecting and restoring river-floodplain ecosystems. Jeff has served on scientific panels that provided recommendations for floodplain management to the California Department of Water Resources, Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality and state and federal agencies for California’s Sacramento San Joaquin Delta Restoration Plan.
Jeff earned his B.S. in Biology from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Ecosystem Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He then studied floodplain ecology during a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Davis. His scientific and policy research has been published in journals such as Science, BioScience and Ecological Applications. Jeff strives to communicate the challenges and opportunities of protecting fresh water through op-eds, articles and blog posts in such places as The New York Times, Outside, Grist, and The Guardian.