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Dam Nation: A Geographic Census Of American Dams And Their Large-Scale Hydrologic Impacts, William L. Graf

Faculty Publications

Newly available data indicate that darns fragment the fluvial system of the continental United States and that their impact on river discharge is several times greater than impacts deemed likely as a result of global climate change. The 75,000 dams in the continental United States are capable of storing a volume of water almost equaling one year's mean runoff, but there is considerable geographic variation in potential surface water impacts. In some western mountain and plains regions, darns can store more than 3 year's runoff, while in the Northeast and Northwest, storage is as little as 25% of the annual …