DOWNSTREAM FROM THE DAMS

Dr. Hrishikesh Baruah

Asst. Professor, Department of Geology, Arya Vidyapeeth College, 
Guwahati: 781 016

hbaruah@hotmail.com, +919864030992

Rivers have not only helped civilizations to sprout as well as inspire poets to enlighten the world, since geological times rivers have been utilized by nature to host several biological evolutionary events, act as habitat and sculpture the landscape. Nature also exploits the drainage network to dissipate energy that otherwise concentrate in the catchments. Dams happen to be a popular mechanism developed by mankind to extract fluvial energy for its own benefit. Potentially, dams also provide many benefits like reducing flood hazards, supply drinking water, support irrigation, provide recreational opportunities and improve certain aspects of the environment.

Adverse environmental and sociological impacts have also been identified during and after many dam constructions both on the upstream (reservoir) as well as downstream sides. Downstream impacts are however seen many hundreds of kilometres downstream, and well beyond the confines of the river channel. Whether such projects are ultimately beneficial (as projected) or detrimental to both the environment and surrounding human populations have been debated since the 1960s and probably long before that, (c.f., www.wikipedia.org). More recently, the Three Gorges Dam and other similar projects throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America have generated considerable environmental and political debate. By the way, let’s not forget the imbroglio at our own backyard.

Downstream impacts of dams are mostly unrecognized, misunderstood and underestimated during the planning stage, (Adams, 2000). Traditional assessments of dam’s stress on the investment to build it, the annual operating cost and compares the same with direct benefits projected from services like irrigation, power, and flood protection etc that a dam would provide. Such assessments fail to quantify environmental impacts, loss of natural resources and production opportunities, forced resettlement, and social dislocation, etc. Indeed, downstream impacts could be very somber.

Social impacts of dams in downstream environments consequences from multifarious interactions between environmental and economic impacts. Communities whose existence, age old customs and traditions revolve around rivers are influenced all along in a number of ways due to dams. The enormously complex aquatic and floodplain ecosystems as well as river wetlands provide avenues for agriculture, hunting, fishing, grazing, and gathering to the river margin communities. Changes in river flow regimes have very large potential effects on river and floodplain environments, and hence on the people depending on the resources of these ecosystems. Even the distribution of groundwater that river flow supports in space and time is affected. Floodplain agriculture is a high-risk tricky affair wherein planting and harvesting is synchronized with onset and recession of flood. Dams regulate flooding and thereby fertility, and in so doing make the farmers who were earlier skillful in this practice vulnerable. Dams can have significant effects on fishing communities for many hundreds of kilometers downstream. River bed degradation downstream of dams deteriorates spawning grounds for fish. The problem aggravates further as dams not only depreciate downstream water quality but also changes natural flooding pattern thereby deflating the much needed stimulus for fishes as well as other riverine biota to flourish.

Accelerated water flow downstream due to dams acquires the prospect to threaten far away shoreline ecosystems. Dams shrink sediment load reaching coastal plains and deltas and thereby abridges support for wildlife too. Nile delta is experiencing a host of problems due to the Aswan Dam. There is significant erosion of coastlines due to lack of sand, which was once brought by the Nile all along the eastern Mediterranean causing great harm to the brackish water fishing industry.

Carney (1998) identified five forms of capital that fortify the assets of the poor: natural capital (natural resources), financial capital, physical capital (infrastructure to process natural capital to usable product), human capital (skills, knowledge) and social capital. Downstream impacts disarray the tuned interrelationships between these capitals thereby impacting the societal fabric. Isn’t it surprising that despite years of research and quite a large number of experiences globally to be considered as case studies on downstream effects of dams on rivers, only a few general models for predicting how any particular river is likely to adjust following impoundment could be framed till date?

Policy makers, planners, scientists, agencies and intellectuals point fingers at each others when things doesn’t turn out as surmised on paper. Common mortals mostly play the role of mere spectators. Most of the impacts of river engineering are extremely complex and in many cases impossible to predict with certainty, and mankind is still in the process of understanding the intricate relationships between different elements of nature. Every river is unique in terms of its flow patterns, the landscapes it flows through and the species it supports. The relationship between a river and the landscape that it flows through is an affair of constant forceful adjustments maneuvered by climate and tectonics. Dams modify the pre-existing geologically controlled transport regimes and introduce new processes (disturbances) into the channel system. Basically, dams affect the geomorphic system by manipulating the ability of the river to transport sediment and the amount of sediment available for transport.

Downstream effects of dams on rivers can be scaled by the degree to which the dams change the predam flow and transport regimes, (c.f., Brandt, 2000). Typical downstream responses are channel bed degradation, textural changes like coarsening or fining of surface grain-size distributions, and lateral adjustments like expansion or contraction of channel width.

Understanding of the regional geologic setup helps to visualise the trajectory of changes that are likely to hit the terrain planned to be ornamented with a dam. Geologic setting has direct control over the watershed, channel properties and sediment load through a hierarchical set of inter-linked processes. At  the scale of a drainage basin, the geology, including both physical properties of the underlying rocks and their structural features and tectonic deformation, interacts with climate to produce topography, including relief and the drainage network pattern, (c.f., Starkel, 2003). As such, detailed studies of interactions between climate and tectonics is always helpful while planning something as big as damming the Himalayan rivers. While tectonics is a major player in regulating internal dynamism of the earth, climate commands similar clout on the exterior front of the planet.

The tectonically charged setup of North East India is known to all. Climate here plays a big role too. The palaeoclimatic scenario of the Indian sub-continent during the last 15K years suggests that the dynamism of the Himalayan Rivers have been largely influenced by the SW monsoon, (c.f., Tripathi et al., 2004).

Such inferences could be drafted vide studies on pollens, sediment characteristics, palaeosalinity records, geomorphic and structural entities to name a few. Yet, in the NE Himalayas that caters to the water resources capital of the nation the relationship between climate, erosion, deposition and tectonic activities is yet to be convincingly understood. Records suggest that erosion, river hydraulic energy and sediment load is always high in the Himalayan Rivers in consonance with a vibrant and energetic monsoon over the years. Highly stimulated monsoon invigorates denudation and river dynamism which further can contribute to tectonic movements. Evidently, in the whole Himalayan region the Brahmaputra basin experiences relatively higher rates of uplift due to intense erosion and subsequent isostatic (read, height) adjustment, (Singh, 2006). Srivastava et al. (2009) in their detailed studies in and around the Pasighat area of Arunachal Pradesh have come across many evidences proving high interaction of climate and tectonics. Somewhat inherent disciplinary bias in dam planning process influences downstream impacts which are seen as a secondary problem, to be addressed once the technological viability of the project is known. However, the initial investment of technical evaluation is such that it becomes hard to stop a project when the stage for incorporation of full social costs comes.

W. Adams from the University of Cambridge in his research paper ‘Downstream Impacts of Dams’ submitted to the World Commission on Dams in 2000 opined that analysis of the impacts of dam’s impacts should be holistic in spatial, social and economic senses. A mechanism to monitor and periodically re-examine the impacts of dam development in downstream communities should be an integral element of the planning process. The USGS (United States Geological Survey) for example, does the monitoring and provide dam managers and resource planners with the kind of in-depth information they need to reduce some of the more harmful downstream effects of dams on river environments. All people for whom the natural flow of the river and its associated resources are natural capital to survive and sustain in life must be adequately benefited. Women, children and the elderly, tend to be impacted by dams more and as such, project planning should allow for the participation of people affected by project development in downstream areas.

Controversial Zangmu Dam on Brahmaputra, Gyaca, China

Gauranga Dehingia
B.Sc 3rd Year

HUMAN ENGINEERED EARTHQUAKES

Dr. Hrishikesh Baruah

Asst. Professor (Sr.), Department of Geology, Arya Vidyapeeth College,

Guwahati: 781 016

hbaruah@hotmail.com ; +919864030992

For a common man, earthquake is a manifestation of nature’s discontent. Many people may never comprehend the fact that human beings have acquired the capability to produce earthquakes long back. So, when an earthquake occurs, very few would ever even bother to think, "Was that natural or man-made?” In fact, human activities can trigger earthquakes unwittingly or calculatedly in the most undesired places.

Human-caused quakes are mostly tiny, registering less than four on geologist’s seismic scales and they don’t occur along natural faults but can be attributed to mining tons of say, coal leading to mine’s roof collapses. However, some human actions can trigger much larger quakes along natural fault lines simply because anthropogenic activities can toss enough mass around to shift the pattern of stresses in the Earth’s crust. Faults those were hitherto dormant for a million years can suddenly be pushed to failure.

What are the ways by which anthroquakes can be triggered?

Big dams that retain huge quantities of water can generate earthquakes by what can be called "hydro-fracturing," in which weight of the water stresses fractures in the underlying rock. A leading scholar on the topic, H. K. Gupta (2002) in his review of studies on Reservoir Triggered Seismicity (RTS) highlights that globally, there are over 90 identified sites of earthquakes triggered by the filling of water reservoirs. In fact, the largest and most damaging earthquake (M = 6.3) triggered by a man-made reservoir occurred in 1967 in Koyna, India. India experienced two more such quakes due to failures in 1983 at Bhatsa in Maharashtra (M = 4.9) and 1993 at Killari or ‘Latur’ in SW India (M = 6.1). China has had a number of RTS incidents. In fact scientists say it is possible that the 320 millions of tons of water in the Zipingpu Dam played a direct role in the devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China in May 2008. Christian Klose (2008), a geophysical hazards research scientist from Columbia University explained using geophysical data, how it likely happened. RTS trends show that the magnitude of the foreshock is higher than the magnitude of the aftershock and, both values are generally higher than in cases of natural earthquakes. Latest moves to tap the hydroelectric potential of north east India may increase the probability of RTS as this region is one of the most tectonically active places in the whole world.

Waste disposal, particularly if it is toxic has been a headache for the civic planners. In early 1960s, Denver, a relatively earthquake free city experienced an uncharacteristic series of tremors. Geologist, David Evans traced the cause to a 4000 metres deep sewage disposal well which penetrated a fault zone in the Rocky Mountains.

Globally 75% of extracted coal is used for electricity production. In case of India, it is 67%. Such a situation demands that a lot of coal mines work overtime. To meet the demands, miners pulled 6,195 million metric tons of coal out of the Earth in 2006 alone. Often water needs to be pumped out along with the coal, sometimes extracting dozens of times as much water as coal. This leads to a lot of mass transfer that can modify the prevailing stress-strain regime in an area thereby leading to a quake. The greatest earthquake in Australia's history that reached 5.6 in magnitude struck Newcastle in New South Wales on December 28, 1989, killing 13 people, injuring 160, and provoking damages estimated to 3.5 billion U.S. dollars. Tectonic changes, due to 200 years of underground coal mining, were the trigger.

Three of the biggest anthroquakes (M ranging between 6.9 and 7.3) of all time occurred in Uzbekistan's Gazli natural gas field between 1976 and 1984. The combination of liquid extraction and injection changed the tectonic system in the field. A similar situation also occurred in the late 1960s in an oilfield near Rangely in Colorado.

Way back in 2005, a geologist claimed that the world’s then-tallest building, the Taipei 101 weighing more than 700,000 metric tons, was stimulating earthquakes in a long-dormant fault in Taiwan. Although it isn’t outside the realm of possibility for a building to create an earthquake, more studies are necessary to be done.

Tectonic warfare has been a less known and classified field of research and activities definitely having its roots in the concepts of telegeodynamics as developed by the visionary scientist Nikola Tesla. While celebrating his 79^th birthday in 1935, Tesla shared with reporters the concepts of what he described as "controlled earthquakes." After his death in 1943, the US Government confiscated all of his papers, and the FBI declared them classified until further notice.

Nuclear explosions also cause earthquakes that are felt as shaking and recorded by seismographs all around the world. But not even the largest bomb test has ever induced a natural earthquake.

Climate and carbon are set to influence one and all in the coming future. That global warming can influence earthquakes was one of the conclusions of the researchers who got together at the conference on ‘Climate Forcing of Geological and Geomorphological Hazards’ in London on September 2009. That a link between climate and the rumblings of the crust exists has been around for years, but only now is it becoming clear just how sensitive rock can be to the air, ice and water above.

Subtle changes in sea level do influence under water seismicity. Researchers have found a distinct relationship between El Nino and quakes on the Easter micro plate - the tectonic plate that lies beneath the ocean off the coast of Easter Island. Since 1973, the arrival of El Nino every few years has correlated with a greater frequency of underwater. El Nino raises the local sea level by a few tens of centimetres and most likely, the extra water weight may increase the pressure of fluids in the pores of the rock beneath the seabed. This might be enough for faults to slip.

Even our attempts to stall global warming could trigger a catastrophic event. Scientific community’s untiring efforts to fight the menace of global warming resulted in the concept of carbon sequestration which is basically a composite of geo-engineering techniques developed with a mission for the long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon so that the buildup of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is reduced. Geological sequestration looks very promising. Bury the carbon dioxide away underground and forget about it. But, geophysicists are concerned that burying the carbon could trigger earthquakes and tsunamis.

In a carbon sequestration power plant (CCS), carbon dioxide is extracted from the exhaust then pumped into aquifers and old gas fields several kilometres beneath the Earth's surface. However, carbon dioxide expands as it rises through the porous rock, increasing pressure inside that may be enough to reactivate a fault and trigger an earthquake. According to Ernest Majer, a seismologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, chemical reactions between the injected carbon dioxide, water and rock could also destabilise the rock. Storage sites far from human settlements may also pose threats.

Indeed! We have progressed a lot.

USING THE EARTH ITSELF AS A WEAPON

Dr. Hrishikesh Baruah

Senior Lecturer, Department of Geology, Arya Vidyapeeth College,
Guwahati: 781 016

hbaruah@hotmail.com ; +919864030992

How many of us would ever have such a weird dream? Isn’t the theme of this write-up astonishing? Well! While surfing the net, I came across something interesting. In the 1985 James Bond film ‘A View to a Kill’, Christopher Walken who plays the bad guy, Max Zorin is a business magnate dealing with microchips. Zorin planned to blow-up the San Andreas Fault outside San Francisco which would cause a massive earthquake that will flood Silicon Valley and thus help Zorin monopolise. Max Zorin had in fact, declared tectonic war on the United States.

War has been an avoidable craze of mankind since ages. Factually, any war is fought by specific warfare(s) with the purpose of compelling the defeated side to do the will of the victor. Warfare is the activity of fighting a war, especially using particular weapons or methods. Warfare may be conventional as well as unconventional (c.f., www.wikipedia.org). Conventional warfare types are defensive, offensive, jungle, border, urban, desert, maneuver, trench, mountain, arctic and naval while, unconventional warfare types are guerilla, psychological, biological, chemical, mine, air, sub-aquatic, space, electronic, cyber, directed energy, nuclear and tribal or gang. What about ‘tectonic war’?

Our Earth has been in a very dynamic state both externally as well as internally since its birth. While external dynamisms are reflected in terms of say, weather and climatic variations with respect to space and time, plate movements, earthquakes, volcanism, etc. are manifestations of internal dynamism. Plate movements engineered by the Earth’s endogenetic energy system leads to accumulation of stress at certain locations. When tolerance level of the stressed rock units exceeds, strain is accompanied by expulsion of the excessive energy in the form of earthquakes. ‘Internal forces’ of the Earth is a great architect which sculptures a myriad of structures in the rocks and governs their disposition in particular trends in a larger scale. In this context, ‘structure’ is a form acquired by rocks in response to the stresses affecting it, may be more than once with variable intensities and from different directions. Tectonics is study of major structural features of the Earth’s crust. Structural and tectonic studies can highlight the level of vulnerability of a region in terms of seismicity. A more vulnerable region will need less energy (stress) for it to succumb leading to an earthquake. Imagine, if this energy is human induced.

While nuclear prowess is something many nations would desire to acquire with continuity, the weapons of war in the new millennium would involve the use of Planet Earth itself wherein the power of natural processes would be harnessed. An internationally acclaimed expert on radiation, Rosalie Bertell in her book, "Planet Earth: the Latest Weapon of War" (2000), revealed this unbelievable truth. In fact, the latest weapon in the arsenal of the US military is Planet Earth itself. Similarly, mankind has achieved that much of technological proficiency to play with the Earth’s exo-dynamic setup. Weather will be one of the worst destructive weapons by the year 2025.

This endeavour tries to ensemble a few available scraps highlighting the destructive human endeavours.
HAARP, (America's High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) has been a scientific venture aimed at studying the properties and behaviour of the ionosphere (upper layer of the atmosphere), with the objective of understanding and using it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.
However, HAARP and similar installations in Russia also create pulsed, extremely low frequency (ELF) waves which have been directed deep into the earth itself. The ELF waves or energy systems interfere with and influence the Earth’s own endogenetic energy system producing what is known in the scientific lexicon as the ‘Tesla Effect’. The ELF waves can be used to convey mechanical effects and vibrations across intercontinental distances to any selected target site on the globe with force levels equivalent to major nuclear explosions. These waves have the potential to generate earth movements that can cause disturbance of volcanoes and tectonic plates, which in turn, have an effect on the weather. They can manipulate the weather, creating storms and torrential rains over an area.
Literatures state many earthquakes being preceded by certain unexplained phenomena. The Tang Shan earthquake in China, which occurred on 28 July 1976 and left 650,000 people dead was a catastrophic event preceded by an airglow, said to have been caused by Soviet ELF wave experiments to heat the ionosphere. Unusual ultra low frequency waves were detected in California on 12 September 1989. These waves grew in intensity and finally subsided on 5 October. On 17 October, they appeared again with signals so strong that they went off the scale. Three hours later, the earthquake took place. Enigmatically, an earthquake in Bolivia in 1994 originated 600 km below the earth's surface - 24 times deeper than normal.
Weather modification has been on the US air force and Russian agenda since long time. Way back in 1992 the Russians told the Wall Street Journal they could already achieve it. However, the crux of the problem is that does anyone have the wisdom to control weather wisely, and unselfishly? As Dr. Bertell points out, it is since the inception of Star Wars experiments that El Nino has changed its cycle and become far more severe with devastating effects. In 1996 severe flooding affected Nepal, India, Bangladesh and China in which millions were left homeless. At the same time, Canada was hit by torrential rains, flooding, tornadoes, hail and thunderstorms that seemed like very abnormal climatic conditions. Similarly, heavy snowfall not seen in decades, appeared in South Africa cutting off food supplies and taking lives due to the extreme cold. Disasters of such magnitudes have been doubted by many experts as human engineered.
If somebody loves watching clouds, the menu card offers a lot these days in the form of artificial clouds of different shapes due to atmospheric aerosols. These artificial clouds are thought of by many as being ‘natural’ since aerosols have been gradually introduced for many years in the atmosphere simply because they facilitate functioning of very advanced electromagnetic technology. Scientists studying earthshine say that the planet appeared to dim from 1984 to 2001 and then brightened from 2001 to 2003. These variations were due to the amount of clouds covering the planet. More clouds reflect more light back into space, potentially cooling the planet, while a dimmer planet would mean warming up. That means the changes in brightness could signal climate change.
Our planetary atmosphere has been a dump-yard of particulate matters which are highly charged, electrically-conductive and useful for military projects. The air we breathe is laden with asbestos-sized synthetic fibers and toxic metals, including barium salts, aluminum, and reportedly, radioactive thorium. Atmospheric barium weakens human muscles, including those of the heart. Inhaled aluminum goes directly to the brain and medical specialists confirm that it causes oxidative stress within brain tissue. These are death-defying times for human beings and all living things. As Dr. Gwen Scott (2009) puts it, “………our air supply is a toxic soup because of chemtrails. Once inhaled, they become systemic in less than a minute”.
The Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques enforced from 5 October 1978 prohibits using the environment as a weapon in conflicts. However, ENMOD is being deployed by militaries around the world despite the prohibition. It seems like science fiction to most people when they first hear of it, but these military programmes have been developing for decades.
Clearly, the fact that military activities can cause freak weather or an earthquake by accident as well as deliberately as part of geophysical / tectonic warfare, is indeed a frightening prospect for the Planet.