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Much like the rest of the Amazon basin, the Madeira River watershed is in a state of transition, driven by land-use change (LULCC), hydropower development, and a changing climate. Most standard engineering designs and environment impact assessments (EIAs) for hydroelectric dams rely on stationary assumptions for important environment variables (e.g. rainfall, flowrate, sediment flux, etc.), i.e. they do not take into account climate change or LULCC. Even without considering the myriad of socio-environmental impacts of dams, additional uncertainty about the viability of a dam is introduced if nonstationary climate change and LULCC scenarios are not considered. In this study, we quantified the sensitivity of Madeira River flow and sediment load to projected changes in climate using a synthesis of changes to potential evapotranspiration and precipitation from the literature. We quantified these changes at the site of two hydroelectric dam complexes, one in the lowlands that consists of two large run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects and another in the foothills of the Andes. Reservoir sedimentation and expected project life span were calculated for both stationary and non-stationary hydrological conditions to assess whether a nonstationary calculation is necessary as a factor of safety for dam viability and life-span calculations. |
