Rethinking Hydropower Management: Safeguarding Biodiversity while improving Climate Adaptation

ongoing

The challenge for societal decision-making is that hydropower facilities are long-lived and often built under very different socio-economic realities from today's world. The evolving societal setting around hydropower has prompted societies to promote the sustainability of existing hydropower operations. The local geographical, climatic, and other ecosystem characteristics determine the ecological needs and the impact of mitigation measures. In the project, the novelty lies in the fact that it takes a holistic and multidisciplinary view through collaboration between social, hydrological, ecological, and climate perspectives in an integrated analysis for the first time. The project combines these through models, experiments, and field observations by using predictions and scenarios developed in one to assess impacts on the other. The project will develop a systematic understanding of the sectorial interaction and develop methods to assess changes in hydropower management.

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