Amazon EcoVistas to guide sustainable dam siting

Rapid hydroelectric dam expansion in the Amazon poses a serious threat to Earth’s largest and most biodiverse river basin. There are 158 dams in the Amazon River basin, with another 351 proposed. These projects are typically assessed individually with little coordinated planning.

Published in Science, the new study provides the first computational approach for evaluating basin-level trade-offs between hydropower and ecosystem services.

Co-author Stephen Hamilton, an ecosystem ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies explained: “Continued hydropower development in the Amazon is inevitable. So how can that proceed in a way that optimises energy output at the lowest environmental cost?

“The answer comes in selecting projects strategically, taking into account multiple environmental criteria that have thus far been too difficult to account for simultaneously in planning large numbers of potential projects.”