The constructions of dams on a river mostly increase the seismic activity in the storage lake region, in addition to the adversely affect of dams on the natural cycle of water. So, I believed that the construction of dams must be very limited.
These are created by us for our benifit, mainly to grow and supply more food to feed the population increased at the speed of rocket by us.
Anything against natural state is detrimental to nature.
After building river dams, river beds are elevated for scarcity of water at most of the time of year. The depth of the created water bodies are reduced due to deposition of carried sands and stones of the river. It is the main cause of flood at lower course plains of the rivers.
The estuary also become elevated and many other detrimental effects are also seen.
considering the population pressure, shortage of water, cheap electricity and irrigation source though out the year, and many more, storage lakes and Dam are worth important. various studies have been reported the environment and socioeconomic impact of dam has been studies with and with out dam. and conclusion were the favor of having dam and storage lakes. so i believe more and more storage lakes save water save life
It is possible that filling and draining large dam basins can have an influence on the trigger of earthquakes. This has been hypothesized even for the magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake. I am not sure dams can affect seismicity in a broader sense, though. Do you have authoritative references for this?
Thank you to the participants in this discussion
1- The construction of dams and reservoirs in active seismic areas causes an increasing in the induced seismic events. Alsinawi and his students discussed this problem in Iraq of many dams for the period 1975 -1990 and they obtained the increase of seismic activity in the dam sites. The induced seismicity and after a duration of many years can triggers a natural earthquake.
2- On the other side, the evaporation of water from the reservoirs may increase the salinity of water in certain degree. The discharge of water from the reservoirs with relatively high salinity may be negatively affecting soil of the area below the dam, finally this process negatively affecting the agricultural products.
3-The increasing of dam construction and due to the weight of the reservoirs, the isostacy of the earth were changed, then the earth changes some of the physical characteristics in certain areas to keep itself stable.
I believed that the earth is living mass, so it is affected by the human activity on the earth including dam constructions.
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