Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 31, 2026

In Situ SIMS and IR Spectroscopy of Well-defined Surfaces Prepared by Soft Landing of Mass-selected Ions
Published on: June 16, 2014
Synthesizing dam-induced land system change
Philippe Rufin1,2, Florian Gollnow3, Daniel Müller4,5,6
1Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099, Berlin, Germany. philippe.rufin@geo.hu-berlin.de.
Abstract:
Dam construction and operation modify land systems. We synthesized 178 observations of dam-induced land system changes from 54 peer-reviewed case studies. Changing extents of forests (23%), agricultural land (21%), and built-up areas (11%) were reported frequently, alongside alterations in land use intensity (23%). Land cover changes were mostly related to hydropower and multi-purpose dams, while irrigation dams dominantly caused land use intensity changes. While a significant share of the changes was caused by reservoir flooding (29%), indirect effects which interact with societal and environmental systems (42%) were of utmost importance. We suggested the distance to the dam and the time since commissioning as potential controls for the direction of land system changes. Our insights provide opportunities for future inductive investigations across large populations of dams at regional to global scales and highlight that multi-disciplinary research perspectives are imperative for the production of generalizable knowledge.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
The Colonization of Land
Global Climate Change
Design Example: Creating a Hydraulic Model of a Dam Spillway
Net Change Theorem
Rates of Change
Work Done During Volume Change
Consider a gas confined to a cylinder fitted with a movable piston at one end. If the gas expands from volume V1 to volume V2, it exerts a force on the piston, such that the piston moves by a distance dr.
The work done by the gas on the piston can be expressed as

