Evaluating the Role of Small Impoundments in Legacy Sediment Storage
Abstract
Recent research highlighting the prevalence of dams built for water power in the mid-1800s has led to suggestions that strategies for managing legacy sediment in the Eastern United States should be re-evaluated. However, the link between reach-scale observations of historic dam sites to processes at the catchment scale have not been examined, nor have the role of other, similar historic changes been evaluated. This presentation will compare dam dynamics, including mill density data and synthetic estimates of beaver populations with sedimentation rates recorded in sediment cores. If low-head dams were a dominant mechanism in sediment storage, we expect to see changes in sedimentation rates with the expatriation of the beaver and the rise and decline of water power. Further, we expect to see spatial variation in these changes as beaver and mill densities and potential sediment yield are spatially heterogeneous. Ultimately, dramatic changes in sediment yield due to land use and hydrological alterations likely drove sedimentation rates; the mechanistic importance of storage likely depends on temporal coincidence.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AGUFM.H43A0995B
- Keywords:
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- 1808 HYDROLOGY / Dams;
- 1834 HYDROLOGY / Human impacts;
- 1862 HYDROLOGY / Sediment transport