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Hydrological Simulation Considering the Anthropogenic Impact on the Yangtze River's Water Discharge: Effects of the Three Gorges Dam

Author(s): Ana Jagui Perez-Kuroki; Han Soo Lee; Takao Yamashita

Linked Author(s): Han Soo Lee

Keywords: Three Gorges Dam; Hydrological Simulation; Yangtze River; HSPF; East China Se

Abstract: The Yangtze River (YR) system has been drastically modified by the completion of the biggest dam in Asia, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD). The river had a previous water discharge average of near800billions m 3 /year with half of that amount coming from upstream TGD location. This means an actual 400billion m 3 /year of water will be controlled by the dam operations. While its functions have a positive impact in flood controls, it also has a negative impact on the East China Sea (ECS) ’s marine environment such as water quality, salinity and temperature profiles, sediment transport and marine biology. Some of these possible impacts due to dam operation particularly on YR basin were studied through hydrological simulations using a Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) with validations at different points along the river. The topography, landuse and meteorological condition from available weather stations were taken into account for the watersheds in the downstream area of the TGD. We select two different scenarios for this research targeting to simulate how much water will enter to the ECS if: the TGD does not exist (first scenario), and if the TGD is operated in full capacity retaining all the upstream water (second scenario). The preliminary results shows that the flow at the outlet of Yangtze River will decrease by around 40%during the non-rainy season and by 65%during rainy season if an extreme condition of zero flow from TGD occurs.

DOI:

Year: 2010

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