River restoration by dam removal: Enhancing connectivity at watershed scales

摘要: The prolonged history of industrialization, flood control, and hydropower production has led to the construction 80,000 dams across U.S. generating significant hydrologic, ecological, social adjustments. With increased ecological attention on re-establishing riverine connectivity, dam removal is becoming an important part large-scale river restoration nationally, especially in New England, due its early European settlement waterpower-based industry. To capture broader dimensions removal, we constructed a GIS database all inventoried England irrespective size reservoir volume document magnitude fragmentation. We compared characteristics these existing attributes removed over last ∼25 years. Our results reveal that National Inventory Dams significantly underestimates actual number (4,000 >14,000). combat effects barriers, been robust with 127 having between ca. 1990–2013. These range size, largest (30%) ranging 2–4 m high, but 22% were 4–6 m. They are not isolated small drainage basins: most drained watersheds 100–1,000 km2. Regionally, re-connected ∼3% (3,770 km) regional network although primarily through few select where abundant barrier-free lengths occur, suggesting more strategic approach opportunity enhance rate re-connection. Given regional-scale forest cover water quality past century, offers capitalize efforts, providing watershed scale enhancing resilience face global anthropogenic changes.