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Impacts of dam-regulated flows on channel morphology and riparian vegetation: a longitudinal analysis of Satsunai River, Japan

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An Erratum to this article was published on 17 August 2010

Abstract

We examined the impacts of the Satsunai River Dam on the hydrology and development of riparian vegetation along the upper and lower reaches of the Satsunai River downstream from the dam. We estimated frequency curves of the flood discharge during the pre-dam (1976–1996) and post-dam (1997–2006) periods and simulated the flood frequency at sampling points within sites under pre-dam, post-dam and dam-removal (using the pre-dam flood discharge and post-dam cross-sections) scenarios. Changes in channel morphology and land cover were investigated by analyzing aerial photographs. Our results indicate that the 20-year flood at the upper site decreased substantially (from 599 to 271 m3/s) after dam operation, while that of the lower site decreased slightly (from 1025 to 977 m3/s). Within the upper site, the proportion of >20-year return periods increased considerably (from 31.0 to 48.6%) while the proportion of 1- to 20-year return periods decreased (from 30.5 to 8.9%) after dam operation. Flood frequency results for the dam-removal scenario were similar to those for the pre-dam period, suggesting that a return to pre-dam discharge rates would restore the pre-dam distribution of flood frequency at the upper site. Within the lower site, however, the distribution of flood frequency varied little between the pre- and post-dam scenarios, because tributary inflows between the sites mitigated the impacts of dam-regulated flows. Land cover types were associated with flood frequency at both sites. The reduced flood frequency of the upper site resulted in increased area of riparian vegetation and decreased area of active channel.

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Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank the HRDB for providing a series of aerial photographs, cross-sections and discharge datasets. We also thank T. Ono for supporting GIS analyses and H. Iwase and T. Kubo for hydrological simulations. This study was funded by a grant in applied ecological engineering from the Water Resources Environment Technology Center (no. 2007-001) and supported by the Sustainability Governance Project of Hokkaido University.

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  1. Graduate School of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, N9W9, Sapporo, 060-8589, Japan

    Mayumi Takahashi & Futoshi Nakamura

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  1. Mayumi Takahashi
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  2. Futoshi Nakamura
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Correspondence to Mayumi Takahashi.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11355-010-0123-2

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7 and 8.

Table 6 Frequencies (%) of sampling points by flood return period for the three scenarios (Fig. 4)
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Table 7 GLM results for edge density: the fifteen models evaluated for each site ranked by AIC and ΔAIC
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Table 8 Proportion of sampling points in each category (land cover × flood frequency) for the pre- and post-dam scenarios (Fig. 7)
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Takahashi, M., Nakamura, F. Impacts of dam-regulated flows on channel morphology and riparian vegetation: a longitudinal analysis of Satsunai River, Japan. Landscape Ecol Eng 7, 65–77 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-010-0114-3

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