Strategies of Successful Anti-Dam Movements: Evidence from Myanmar and Thailand

Scholars are rarely able to examine anti-dam movements that result in project suspensions or cancellations since these cases are rare empirically. Yet, they are central to understanding how anti-dam movements can succeed. This paper analyzes the movements against Myanmar’s Myitsone Dam and Thailand’s Kaeng Suea Ten Dam. Likely the most successful anti-dam movements in Southeast Asia in recent years, they achieved suspension over 6 and 37 years, respectively. The research is based on 60 semistructured interviews carried out over a period of 8 months. Leveraging thinking from both the constructionist and structural schools within the field of social movement studies, it is found that the framing of the Myitsone Dam as a project threatening the national cultural heritage of Myanmar (in combination with political change in the country in 2010/2011) largely explains the movement’s success. Meanwhile, the set of sophisticated tactics (including inter alia demonstrations, Thai Baan research, 24/7 monitoring of the dam site, and spiritual activities) was decisive for the efficacy of the movement against Thailand’s Kaeng Suea Ten Dam.     

Baselines of acceptability and generational change on the Mactaquac hydroelectric dam headpond (New Brunswick,Canada)

Hydroelectricity is an old yet reliable form of renewable energy, with acknowledged social and ecological impacts. A tension currently exists between such concerns and energy needs, with dam construction and removal ongoing around the world. It is critical to better understand the implications of both on local citizens. We performed map elicitation interviews with 20 locals around the prematurely-aging Mactaquac Dam and headpond, in New Brunswick, Canada, to understand if and how they came to accept the dam landscape, and what they want for its future. A Baselines of Acceptability conceptual framework was developed to guide the interpretation. Respondents demonstrated attachment to the dam-in-place landscape, even those initially disadvantaged by its construction, and a preference for keeping the headpond intact. Despite this demonstrated adaptability, the paper calls for improved transparency, scope and justice in energy landscape decision-making, as well as further testing of the framework with different demographics, infrastructure case studies and over time.     

The effects of pre-season high flows,climate, and the Three Gorges Dam on low flow at the Three Gorges Region,China

The efficient operation of a multipurpose reservoir requires information on high and low flows. However, analyses of inflows for high flows and for low flows are typically done independently. In this paper, we considered the joint dependence of the low flow on the preceding high flow volume and duration for the wet season in the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River Basin in China. High flow volume and duration were found to have a strong association with the annual minimum 7-day flow in Cuntan, Wanxian, and Yichang stations. Furthermore, we identified the Arctic Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and snow cover in the Tibetan Plateau to have statistically significant teleconnections with the annual minimum 7-day flow. Bayesian models that consider a different level of pooling of the site by site regressions were then developed for the annual minimum 7-day flow conditional on the climate indices and high flow volume (or duration). The full pooling model performed best, suggesting that a homogeneous regional response is best identified given the global climate predictors. Statistics such as the deviance information criterion and reduction of error, coefficient of efficiency, and coverage rate under cross validation indicate the good performance of the model. Snow cover in the western Tibetan Plateau and high flow volume were identified as the most influential factors of the annual minimum 7-day flow through their impact on water storage in the basin. Recent simulations since June 2003, when the Three Gorges Dam operation started, were used to analyse the effect of dam operation on the annual minimum 7-day flow. A comparison of observations and predictions during the post-dam period demonstrated that the dam operation effectively modifies the annual minimum 7-day flow period to have higher flows.     

Event in the case of a single reservoir: the Ghèzala dam in Northern Tunisia

The paper focuses on the development of reservoir operating rules for dry and rainfall events, and their implementation in the case of the Ghézala dam located in northern Tunisia (characterized by Mediterranean climate). Rainfall events are defined in terms of depth and duration that are correlated to each other. A depth analysis per event is performed, conditioned on the event duration. The gamma distribution provides a good fit to depth per event, especially for events lasting at least 6 days. The event duration fits a geometric distribution, whereas the dry events during the rainy season fit a negative binomial distribution. The climatic cycle length is fitted to a gamma distribution. On this basis, many 50-year synthetic event series were generated. Every synthetic streamflow sequence obtained from synthetic rainfall sequences as well as the one derived from the historic rainfall events time series were optimized and optimal decisions were formulated. These decisions were assessed by means of multiple regression analysis to estimate the relation between the optimal decision to every stage (dry or rainfall event) and other system variables. Optimal rules, which have a linear form, were derived by predetermined useful storage interval and depend on storage, inflows and downstream demand at dry or rainfall event t. The range of t is 1–13 days (rainfall event) and 1–57 days (dry event). The rules were satisfactory for every predetermined useful storage interval. The simulated dam performance generated by the operation rules was compared with the deterministic optimum operation and the historical operation. Also included is the comparison of the implicit stochastic optimization-based operation policy per event during the water years 1985–2002.

金沙江下游局地大气边界层风场变化特征

利用2008年在金沙江下游溪洛渡水电站坝区及向家坝水电站库区获得GPS低空探空资料以及同步地面观测资料,统计分析了坝区从地面开始到大气边界层2000 m高度四季不同高度的风场变化特征.结果表明:(1)春季溪洛渡坝区大气边界层以偏西风为主导风向,1500m高度层以下静风和小风出现频率大,是四个季节中地面静风、小风出现频率的最大值;(2)夏季地面静风、小风出现频率为四个季节中最小,夏季大气边界层中低层主要盛行西风和西北偏西风;(3)秋季溪洛渡坝区大气边界层中低层主要盛行偏西风,到高层则逐渐转变为偏北风;(4)冬季溪洛渡坝区大气边界层低空盛行以西风和西北偏西风为主导的偏西风;中高层主要风向是西风、西南偏西风、东风和东北偏东风;(5)溪洛渡坝区秋、冬季大气边界层西风、东北偏北风、东北偏东风风速最大值均出现在2000m高度层.     

The nature of iron and manganese species in dam waters

The molecular weight (M. W.) distributions of iron and manganese species in dam water samples were investigated by use of gel filtration, while the ion-exchangeable and non-ion-exchangeable fractions of these metals were also analysed by ion-exchange chromatography. For the samples studied, more than 96 per cent of the manganese species present were found to be ion-exchangeable, whilst less than 35 per cent of iron species were ion-exchangeable. These results correlated with the finding that all the manganese species had molecular weights less than 700, but that the molecular weights of the iron species were mostly in excess of 5000. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy has been used to support the finding that manganese is almost totally present in the form of simple aquated Mn(II) ions.     

水下爆破对大坝影响的离心模拟试验研究

由于离心机能够在原型应力条件下模拟爆破对大坝的影响。本文使用中国水利水电科学研究院研制的离心模拟爆破系统,在不同重力加速度之下研究了在不同水深,距坝面不同距离的情况下雷管爆破对于大坝的影响。     

糯扎渡电站坝基花岗岩工程地质及物理力学特性

糯扎渡水电站坝址区主要分布花岗岩,研究、认识花岗岩体工程地质特性,合理选择岩体物理力学参数,对大坝安全和经济十分重要.大量地质勘察及试验研究,对坝址区花岗岩体的成因、分布,及岩体质量等做出科学评价,提出合理且符合实际的力学参数指标建议值,为电站的建设提供了可靠的地质依据.     

Tectonics,geomorphology and water mill location in Scotland,and the potential impacts of mill dam failure

In this paper we assess the ways in which the topography of glaciated northern Britain has affected the siting and operations of water mills, and compare those factors and mill locations for mills in unglaciated southern Britain. We then explore the impacts of these findings on the potential downstream impacts of mill dam failure.We used a GIS to plot the locations of all 1712 localities in Britain's Ordnance Survey Gazetteer that include “mill”, “milton” (‘milltown’) and “miln” in their name. We then examined the geomorphology of mill locations in two study areas, one in northeast Scotland (glaciated; 421 localities) and one in southern England (unglaciated; 438 localities), assessing (i) mill location within the drainage net, and (ii) the steepness of an adjacent stream within a radius of 500 m of the mill locality. The large majority of mills are located within the first 10 km of the drainage net in both study areas, presumably on relatively stable bedrock channels. The data for most of the mills in both study areas indicate that catchment areas of less than 200 km² are sufficient to supply the water necessary for operation of a mill, but the higher rainfalls and runoff in Scotland (almost twice the values in the England study area) mean that mill dams in S England must have been higher and of higher capacity than those in NE Scotland. That finding is consistent with the results related to channel steepness, which show that mills in Scotland are associated with steeper channels than is the case in England. The generally greater channel steepness in Scotland (and the greater downstream extent of those steeper channels, as also confirmed by the data) reflect both the many glacially steepened bedrock channel reaches in Scotland and the steepening of Scotland's coastal bedrock channels as a result of glacio-isostatic rebound.The technical requirements of water mill operation favour situations where water can be delivered to the top of, or at least part-way up, the mill wheel. Scotland's steeper rivers and its higher rainfalls mean that Scotland's mills require smaller mill dams, if they are needed at all. It would therefore be expected that catastrophic or managed failure of mill dam walls in northern Britain would release lower volumes of trapped sediment to the downstream fluvial system. These lower volumes would in turn result in lower geomorphological impacts downstream of the dam, both in terms of changing channel patterns and burial of the bed. Such dam failure is a key current issue in geomorphology and one case study of a small failed mill dam in western Scotland confirms the minimal downstream impacts of that failure.     

Enhancing streamflow forecasting using the augmenting ensemble procedure coupled machine learning models: case study of Aswan High Dam

ABSTRACT

The potential of the most recent pre-processing tool, namely, complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN), is examined for providing AI models (artificial neural network, ANN; M5-model tree, M5-MT; and multivariate adaptive regression spline, MARS) with more informative input–output data and, thence, evaluate their forecasting accuracy. A 130-year inflow dataset for Aswan High Dam, Egypt, is considered for training, validating and testing the proposed models to forecast the reservoir inflow up to six months ahead. The results show that, after the pre-processing analysis, there is a significant enhancement in the forecasting accuracy. The MARS model combined with CEEMDAN gave superior performance compared to the other models – CEEMDAN-ANN and CEEMDAN-M5-MT – with an increase in accuracy of, respectively, about 13–25% and 6–20% in terms of the root mean square error.