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UPI - New map will aid global water management

Published: 2 June 2011

Researchers in Canada say a geographically explicit, high-resolution global database of large dams and reservoirs will aid sustainable river-flow management.

Researchers at McGill University say the map, the result of a four-year effort, will allow close assessment of critical environmental and social trade-offs associated with dams and reservoirs within the global river network, impossible until now because data describing their location, size and purp

ose have been incomplete and inadequate, a university release reported Thursday. The multiyear project is the result of collaboration by a team of scientists from around the globe, coordinated by the Global Water System Project and led by McGill University's Bernhard Lehner.

"Thorough continental assessments and ongoing sustainable dam management and planning haven't been possible due to a lack of data. We've only been able to look at dams on a case-by-case basis," Lehner said.

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