Dam Removals and River Channel Changes in Northern Ohio: Implications for Lake Erie Sediment Budgets and Water Quality

摘要

There is increasing recognition that anthropogenic changes in rivers, such as construction of dams, river diversions, or channel modifications, have significant long-term consequences for water supply, water quality, aquatic ecosystems, and sediment budgets (e.g., Williams and Wolman 1984, Graf 1999). The impetus to reverse some of these effects has included the removal of approximately 500 dams in the U.S. by the late-1990s (American Rivers et al. 1999), and fostered scientific and policy analysis of the effects of dam removals (Shu-man 1995, Heinz Center 2002, Doyle et al. 2003). Given the interdisciplinary nature of hydrology, several scientific journals have compiled special issues on this subject (e.g., Hart and Poff 2002, Beyer 2002) but none have focused on the changes in the watersheds of one of the Great Lakes.