New Database Tracks Ecological Health Impacts of Dams on World’s Rivers

A newly launched online database illustrates the impacts of nearly 6,000 dams on the world’s 50 major

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Dams in the Yangtze basin
river basins, ranking their ecological health according to indicators of river fragmentation, water quality, and biodiversity. The “State of the World’s Rivers” project was developed by the advocacy organization International Rivers and created using Google Earth. Users can compare the health of individual river basins, see the locations of existing and planned dams, and explore 10 of the most significant river basins in more depth. The 6,000 dams represented in the database are a small percentage of the more than 50,000 large dams that impact the world’s rivers, the organization notes.