Climate and the Role of Dams

Throughout history, humanity has always relied on water for survival

Water is a source of comfort, without which life wouldn’t be normal. It’s a fact that water has specific properties as per nature’s assignment. Its importance especially role of dams can’t be underestimated in earthly affairs. 

Water passes through the soil and undergoes various transformations before going into the atmosphere. Water escapes into the atmosphere from plants and living creatures through various processes, including breathing and transpiration by plants. 

Evaporation

It’s also important to note that the evaporation rate and volume create a mechanism that determines the planet’s constants of temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure. This will, in turn, determine the different parameters of the atmospheric state, including cyclones, anticyclones & cyclones, lightning discharges, charges of clouds, places of precipitation, their respective schedules, and volumes. These constants are responsible for situations that have been happening in certain areas for millions of years, including topics, glaciers, deserts, and forests. 

Water cycles

After precipitation, water dissolves organic substances and minerals in the soil. These substances are then supplied to plant roots while living creatures consume others. Water doesn’t just disappear in living organisms and roots of plants but rather proceeds to move into new forms and substances. Vapors from transpiration and evaporation contribute to the development and growth of living organisms. This cycle has been developed, created, and polished since the start of life. 

The geological structure and aspect of the planet is the primary element that pushes nature forward. It’s a constant source of life on the planet. Man has been using water for a long time, not only for drinking but also for other functions. For instance, water is currently being used as a material for enabling industry work.

Water use shortages

When civilization kicked in, the available water wasn’t enough. Man, therefore, devised new ways of using water, including collecting water in artificial reservoirs, changing its distribution by canals & irrigation, and storing it in aqueducts. Conservation of water in rivers is based on creating bulky dams that flood over large areas to create hydroelectric power plants. The development of dams has been implemented in all continents, with almost every country building huge reservoirs for self-reliance. 

Flooding by super dams

Probably the main role of dams is supporting biodiversity and the main challenge here is that plant and animal life disappears and water conversion in plants and animals becomes almost non-existent. This will also reduce the size of land occupied by plants and animals. There are also increased human activities that might destroy the remaining land. 

As per the latest theory, flooding of territories destroys organic life and increases artificial evaporation. This will force the planet to have global catastrophes and natural disasters. This is the reason why devastating floods have become common in the world today. 

Shallow depths

The main cause of the flooding is the shallow rivers. Naturally, water flushes soil particles continuously off the river banks and lays them on the bottom, and in the process, dissolving the necessary substances. This means that the surface of most rivers are always growing and changing. On top of this are human waste products, human garbage, and several items that contribute to raising the river surface. 

Rivers with a reduced depth will expand floodplains, change their channels intensively, and force a water overflow. To eliminate flooding, it’s important to maintain the depth regularly by removing sediments. However, the most important thing that we can do if we want to preserve the planet for future generations is to return to natural functions of water. One approach that we can employ to reduce artificial evaporation is to stop the construction of obsolete hydroelectric power plants. We should also release previously constructed dams. 

A brilliant invention by V.I. Bodyakin ensures that hydroelectric stations continue to generate electricity using existing generators without dams. This method releases water from the reservoirs without losing energy. The affected areas will quickly grow vegetation and see an increase in organic life.

To preserve water for human needs and have minimal impact on life, it’s important to consider water accumulation in rivers. For safety purposes, there should be a very big difference between the height of the water table in rivers and the height of the banks. 

Rivers care

Nature allows the gradual change and meandering of river beds to allow organic substances and minerals to dissolve and then transfer them downstream. It’s right to say that rivers’ care’ about human and plant life. After millions of years, the river expands and deepens, forming canyons and floodplains. 

Smaller dams are better

It is possible to preserve the natural function of water while at the same time allowing safe accumulation of this natural resource. The accumulation of water for supply in cities and irrigation can be created by using small dams that don’t rise above the banks of floodplains. The floodplains can be used for accumulating water in the spring for later consumption in the summer. Both the interest of nature and human needs must be met. For this to happen, dams should only be built in places where the height of the water level doesn’t exceed the height of the bank of the floodplain. 

Chain of ponds

Dams built with the interest of nature in mind form a cascade of lakes that provide free movement of vessels and fish. It converts a full-flowing river with large water volumes into a chain of lakes distributed over the river’s entire length. However, if this happens on large rivers such as Yangtze and Volga that have fairly high flow and don’t allow long-term water storage, there will be an overgrowing of the rivers. 

Small dams of between 1-2 and 10-20 megalitres don’t threaten coastal areas due to floods. The filling of the floodplain here is done with reasonable limits. They don’t protrude above the surrounding ground and will only fill natural floodplains and bare canyons. No surprise that in such natual dams, some culverts are constructed for spawning fish, taking water, and regulating levels in adjacent pools. 

Groundwater

There will be increased infiltration into the underground streams, thus increasing the volume of groundwater. This will provide greater reserves and new sources away from the channels. It, therefore, becomes easier to install small hydropower plants operating at a small height difference. 

Dams with a height of 1-20 meters are normally stable and don’t experience any problems. There is no need to apply bulk concrete work in such a case. 

Concrete free dams

To prevent floodplains from overflowing with spring water, it’s important to ensure they aren’t filled. Concrete work is only necessary for sluices and culverts. Water will normally overflow from dams in case of floods in places where there are no floodplains. Floods here will be as a result of raising and silting the bottom surface. 

To prevent flooding of dams, the natural stretches should be deepened to 10-30 meters. The rifts-shoals must rise to the level of the coast to direct the flow of water through the culverts. This work can be done using existing dredging equipment.

However, it’s energy-intensive, cumbersome, and requires fairly high labor costs. Several inventions allow you to manage dredging work and solve tasks with minimal cost. The inventions are made in the form of proprietary technological solutions and require research and development.

It’s, therefore, possible to preserve an equal volume of water as in bulky dams reservoirs and at the same time avoid risks of artificial disasters, reduce pressure on nature and increase natural functions of water. 

In mountain and foothill rivers, a chain of lakes with adjustable pools can present a challenge to mudflow and, in the process, allows water to access the fertile soil and enrich it with salts. The rivers can be used to generate electricity using pipes, at least according to the ideas and inventions of V.I. Bodyakin.

If there is no hydroelectric station, it’s possible to create a micro-hydroelectric station distributed along the river’s entire length. The most important thing here is that the vast water areas are released in front of giant hydroelectric power plants, and the soil restores its organic and natural state. 

Friendly rivers

In addition, there are new advantages added since all the rivers in place will become fish hatcheries with a small or no overflow through which the fish can easily escape. There are also bridges in specific places to allow easy passage of people and vehicles. There’s also the possibility of organizing recreational areas and beaches. The most important thing is that rivers will remain navigable and will never dry up during dry periods. 

Conclusion

A new protection strategy is being created for mountain rivers. This is designed to eliminate the need to construct bulky-protected dams with explosions such as the Medeu in Alma-Ata in the 1970s. Since the political tension is disappearing globally, water distribution between states as far as transboundary rivers are concerned will no longer be problematic. We must balance between human needs and the interest of nature as far as water dams are concerned.