Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469;
Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Nov 20;115(47):12069-12074. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1807437115. Epub 2018 Nov 5.
Aging infrastructure and growing interests in river restoration have led to a substantial rise in dam removals in the United States. However, the decision to remove a dam involves many complex trade-offs. The benefits of dam removal for hazard reduction and ecological restoration are potentially offset by the loss of hydroelectricity production, water supply, and other important services. We use a multiobjective approach to examine a wide array of trade-offs and synergies involved with strategic dam removal at three spatial scales in New England. We find that increasing the scale of decision-making improves the efficiency of trade-offs among ecosystem services, river safety, and economic costs resulting from dam removal, but this may lead to heterogeneous and less equitable local-scale outcomes. Our model may help facilitate multilateral funding, policy, and stakeholder agreements by analyzing the trade-offs of coordinated dam decisions, including net benefit alternatives to dam removal, at scales that satisfy these agreements.
老化的基础设施和对河流恢复的日益关注导致美国大坝拆除量大幅增加。然而，拆除大坝的决定涉及许多复杂的权衡。大坝拆除在减少灾害和生态恢复方面的好处可能被水电生产、供水和其他重要服务的损失所抵消。我们使用多目标方法来研究新英格兰三个空间尺度上战略性大坝拆除所涉及的广泛权衡和协同作用。我们发现，增加决策规模可以提高生态系统服务、河流安全和大坝拆除带来的经济成本之间权衡的效率，但这可能导致地方层面结果的异质性和不公平性降低。我们的模型可以通过分析协调大坝决策的权衡，包括拆除大坝的替代净效益，在满足这些协议的规模上，为多边资金、政策和利益相关者协议提供帮助。
