Abstract
Dam removal is becoming more common as aging infrastructure deteriorates and people seek to restore the environmental conditions created by dams. Despite this growth in dam removals, studies analyzing effects of dam removal on meadow ecosystems are limited. Groundwater is an important and often overlooked component of hydrologic systems, particularly in the case of surface water manipulation like dam removal. A planned dam removal project at Van Norden Meadow, in the California Sierra Nevada Range at Donner Pass, was selected to quantify the impact of dam removal on shallow groundwater and the associated meadow system. Mountain meadows are inseparable from local hydrology and are a valuable resource in California’s Sierra Nevada range, providing an important source of water, supporting natural biotic communities, and serving as climate change refugia. Using MODFLOW, an open-source finite-difference groundwater modeling program, we established a baseline groundwater model for Van Norden Meadow and used it to assess potential impacts of dam removal on the subsurface water balance in relation to hydrologic niches to support plant communities. The model predicted a slight decrease of less than 0.9 m in the water table of the lower meadow below a recessional moraine, but no impact to the water table in the upper meadow. The areas adjacent to the dam along the reservoir footprint were found to be most at risk of losing wet meadow vegetation. The model also suggested dam removal led to a 3% increase in baseflow drainage below the meadow. This increase was balanced by an 8% decrease in evapotranspiration and a slight increase (0.9%) in the mobilization of stored groundwater. While no further actions following removal may be needed in the upper meadow, restoration activities, such as vegetation planting or channel filling, may be needed to offset the decrease in the water table and promote wet meadow habitats in some regions of the lower meadow. However, newly exposed areas in the reservoir footprint will promote hydric vegetation recruitment, suggesting a potential net increase in wet meadow vegetation after dam removal in Van Norden Meadow. More broadly, we found MODFLOW was suitable for modeling dam removal despite challenges with steep slopes and thin conductive layers over bedrock.
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Data Availability
The data and materials that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. Code used in the study is available and described in the Supplementary Information file.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the faculty and staff at the University of British Columbia, and personnel at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and the South Yuba River Citizens League for contributing data, expertise and support for this work. We also thank Balance Hydrologics and Gateway Mountain Center for their contributions to field data collection.
Funding
This study was supported by a Discovery Grant awarded to Mark Johnson by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
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All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Model development and analysis were performed by T. Eyster with guidance from C.S. Lowry. Field data collection and validation were coordinated by S. Yarnell. The first draft of the manuscript was written by T. Eyster. Reviewing and editing: M.S. Johnson, S.M. Yarnell and C.S. Lowry. Supervision: M.S. Johnson.
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Eyster, T.D., Johnson, M.S., Yarnell, S.M. et al. Analyzing the Subsurface Consequences of Dam Removal on Groundwater Storage and Hydrologic Niches in a Mountain Meadow Ecosystem. Water Resour Manage 38, 717–731 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-023-03695-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-023-03695-7