Abstract
Abstract Dams, reservoirs, and other water management infrastructure provide benefits, but can also have negative impacts. Dam construction and removal affects progress toward the UN sustainable development goals at local to global scales. Yet, globally-consistent information on the location and characteristics of these structures are lacking, with information often highly localised, fragmented, or inaccessible. A freely available, curated, consistent, and regularly updated global database of existing dams and other instream infrastructure is needed along with open access tools to support research, decision-making and management needs. Here we introduce the Global Dam Watch (GDW) initiative (www.globaldamwatch.org ) whose objectives are: (a) advancing recent efforts to develop a single, globally consistent dam and instream barrier data product for global-scale analyses (the GDW database); (b) bringing together the increasingly numerous global, regional and local dam and instream barrier datasets in a directory of databases (the GDW directory); (c) building tools for the visualisation of dam and instream barrier data and for analyses in support of policy and decision making (the GDW knowledge-base) and (d) advancing earth observation and geographical information system techniques to map a wider range of instream structures and their properties. Our focus is on all types of anthropogenic instream barriers, though we have started by prioritizing major reservoir dams and run-of-river barriers, for which more information is available. Our goal is to facilitate national-scale, basin-scale and global-scale mapping, analyses and understanding of all instream barriers, their impacts and their role in sustainable development through the provision of publicly accessible information and tools. We invite input and partnerships across sectors to strengthen GDW’s utility and relevance for all, help define database content and knowledge-base tools, and generally expand the reach of GDW as a global hub of impartial academic expertise and policy information regarding dams and other instream barriers.
Highlights
Dams, other instream barriers and associated water management infrastructure such as reservoirs are built to support social and economic development and are one of the most pervasive global geo-engineering works in human history
An impressive range of analyses and tools have been produced over the last decade, which could be further accelerated by a concerted effort focused on creating and providing collaborative, open-access dam data and tools
Examples of current open-access tools include the reservoir assessment tool (Biswas et al 2021), which provides information on the operation of current and planned large dams, and the Global Reservoirs and Lakes Monitor [G-REALM] (Birkett et al 2009), which provides water level information for lakes and reservoirs based on satellite altimetry
Summary
Mark Mulligan1,∗ , Bernhard Lehner, Christiane Zarfl, Michele Thieme , Penny Beames, Arnout van Soesbergen1,5 , Jonathan Higgins, Stephanie R Januchowski-Hartley , Kate A Brauman , Luca De Felice , Qingke Wen, Carlos Garcia de Leaniz, Barbara Belletti, Lisa Mandle, Xiao Yang , Jida Wang and Nick Mazany-Wright
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