Problems:
-Creates water resevoirs, floods land
                            -Buries vegetation underwater
                            -Fauna has to find other places to reside     11.
                            -Disease carrying organisms such as mosquitos break out in areas of resevoir
                    -Alternatives
                            -Smaller plants that divert part of river through a turbine don't create flooding   6.
     -Tucurui dam:  
                    -Displaced 35,000 people, including indigenous
                    -Flooded 2,820 km^2 of tropical rainforests when floodgates closed in 1984

     -Aluminum companies build dams because need large sources of power for Al plants, use as much as half the hydro-electric power in some areas  24.
                  

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Table 1 - Regional Forecast of Demand of Electric Energy  14
(Based on Official data from Eletrobras and Brazilian Committee of the World Energy Council)

Region                         Installed Capacity                           Electric Energy                       Hydropower
                                   in 1985 (MW)                               Demand (MW)                      potential
                                   HYDRO  THERMAL                    1985    2000    2010            (MW)     (%)
North                          1370          600                              530      3950    7000            48400     45
Northeast                    5600         580                               2580    8000* 13500*        8200        8
Southeast/Center         23600       2000                            13600  33200* 50200*       33200      31
South                          5630         1160                             2700    8900    15220          16800     16
Total                           36200       4340                             19410  54050  85920         106700   100
 

(*) Demand exceeds regional offer; supply includes inter-regional flow (from the North)

_______________________________________________________________________________
 

Challenges:
        1)  Adequate river regulation and favorable installed capacities
                -Limiting environmental impacts
                -Reservoir storage capacities and flooded areas
        2)  Energy transmission system connecting powerplants with major centers of consumption
                -over 2000 km
                -divided into Southeastern and Northeastern regions
                -high costs
                -UHV technology and operation of resulting system
                -environmental impacts of lines and supporting infastructures
        3)  Inter-regional exchange of energy and differences in hydrologic cycles between drainage basins in different regions require revision of presently used planning practices and critera,
                need to incorporate variation of energy generation capabilities, time patterns, possiblilities of thermal complementation, pumped storage schemes, development of use of secondary energy  14.
 

-Lack of data    
            -Majority don't cover more than 2 decades
            -Sampling error, higher for short length records
            -Very recent installation of gages
            -Sub-basins without installed gages

-Instead, use extrapolation (extension) of riverflow records through use of precipitation data

-FIRM ENERGY? Firm energy generation capability
        -Hydro-power:  depends on stochastic properties of streamflow process (ie high mean streamflow means high generation capability)
                    -also important:  variablity and temporal persistence

-ELECTROBRAS
        -Brazilian Government Holding Company for the public electrical sector  15.

Further Reading:
WORTH OF HYDROLOGICAL DATA IN WATER RESOURCES PROJECTS. APPLICATION: BOLIVIANS AMAZONES ZONE
WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT FOR ENERGY GENERATION PURPOSES IN STREAMS PRESENTING STRONG SEASONAL FLOW VARIATIONS - PLANNING ASPECTS -
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology                               Contact:  lacooney@mit.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
 
 
 

Research Bibliography
***Note:  I will update these web-sites as correct bibliographical entries soon.

1.      Palaeoceanography  Environmental Change Research Centre

2.      Land Surface Hydrology and Water Chemistry The Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA)

3.     The source of the Amazon River was just recently discovered. Why did it take so long?  National Geographic Society

4.     Tropical Deforestation Fact Sheet   NASA Earth Observatory

5.     Effects of Deforestation

6.     Amazonia - Resiliency and Dynamism of the Land and its People  Nigel J.H. Smith, Emanuel Adilson S. Serrão, Paulo T. Alvim, and Italo C. Falesi,  United Nations University

7.    Solving the Amazon?s climate riddle  By Ginger Pinholster, SCIENCE

8.    Fish in the Trees   by Rachel Hauser, NASA Earth Observatory

9.    River Seasons  by Laura Cheshire, NASA Earth Observatory

10.  http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/educ/science/2001/01-04-01.htm

11.  Amazon Deconstruction:  Cause and Effect    camille, charlie, hsing hsing, maya, pete, University of Washington

12.  "Applications of Hillslope Process Hydrology in Forest Land Management Issues:  The Tropical North-East Australian Experience", Mike Bonell

13.  Dictionary of Geography, Oxford University Press

14.  "WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT FOR ENERGY GENERATION PURPOSES IN STREAMS PRESENTING STRONG SEASONAL FLOW VARIATIONS - PLANNING ASPECTS",
                    Bela Petry & Doron Grull
15.  "Analysis of the Streamflow Record Extension for the Xingu River at Babaquara  Maria Elvira Pineiro Maceira and Jorge Machado Damazio  

16.  Seasonal Variations in the evapotranspiration of a transitional tropical forest of Mato Grosso, Brazil  George Vourlitis, Nicolau Priante Filho, Mauro Hayashi, Jose de S. Nogueira, Fernando Caseiro, Jose Holanda Campelo 

17.  Towards improving natural resources use in Eastern Amazonia through a modified sequential agroforestry system  Sa, T.D. de A.; Vielhauer, K.; Kanashiro, M.; Denich, M. and Vlek, P.L.G.

18.  Cloud condensation nuclei in the Amazon Basin:  "Marine" conditions over a continent?  Gregory C. Roberts and Meinrat O. Andreae; Jingchuan Zhou; Paulo Artaxo

19.  Rates and Processes of Amazon Deforestation  Michael Glantz, Tandy Brook, Patricia Parisi