Abstract
Sixty percent of the world’s major rivers are regulated by dams. This presentation discusses water, nutrient, and thermal energy transfers throughout a dam-regulated river corridor. It showcases measurements from hyporheic zones, which function as the river’s liver, of the Lower Colorado River in Texas taken during periodic releases, natural flooding, and baseflow. Simulations of river hydraulics, groundwater flow, and energy and reactive transport generalize the observations. The models and observations collectively show how river regulation has drastically changed hydrobiogeochemical processes over potentially thousands of kilometers of rivers, reflecting the state of most large river corridors in the Anthropocene.
Bio
M. Bayani Cardenas is a hydrology professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences of the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. His research seeks to understand flow and transport processes across different hydrologic settings, water quality and quantity problems, and scales, using a combination of theoretical, computational, and observational methods. He received his education from the University of the Philippines, the University of Nebraska, and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.