Displaying items by tag: reservoir evaporation

Alewives returned by the millions after the Edwards and Ft. Halifax dams were removed in Maine.  John Burrows/ASF via The Revelator

By providing both mitigation and adaption, dam removal can lower greenhouse gas emissions and restore carbon sinks.

This article was originally published in The Revelator. Gary Wockner is an environmental activist, scientist and writer in Colorado.

As the climate crisis escalates, a huge amount of attention and money is being focused on climate solutions.

These can be divided into two categories: solutions that pursue “mitigation,” which lowers greenhouse gas emissions, and those that pursue methods to adapt to climate impacts to increase human and ecological resiliency.

Dams, of course, create enormous environmental harms, many of which have already been described in scientific literature. Equally well documented is the fact that removing dams can restore seriously damaged ecosystems. But missing from almost every climate-solution story and study is how dam removal can be key for both mitigation and adaptation.

Here are 10 reasons how dam removal fights climate change.