Episode 80 - "Dam Nation"

Having just got back from vacationing near a river, Shannon’s mind is wondering (and wandering!) about dams and their impacts, both good and bad. People use dams for electricity, recreation, flood control, and a myriad of other things. Let’s take a look at some huge dams and what they do to both communities and rivers.

• Oroville (1968) is the tallest in the US, and earthen dam in CA 770’ high
• Hoover (1935) is next at 726’ high on the border of AZ and NV
• Tallest dam in the world is Jingping-I dam (2013) in China is 1000’ high
• Largest reservoir in the US is Lake Mead, which holds 29 million acre-feet of water
• Glen Canyon dam
• Lake Powell on the AZ/UT border, and is a close second at 26 million acre-feet capacity.
• Colorado River
• WPA

Why build dams at all?

• Water supply
• Irrigation and flood control
• Power supply
• Recreation

Hydroelectric Power

• Hoover dam generates 4.5 billion kw-hr per year, serving 8 million people in AZ, southern CA and NV
• Itaipu dam, on the border of Brazil and Paraguay, dams the Parana River, the 7th largest in the world.
• Penstock

Fun Paper Friday

Borgonie, G., et al. “Eukaryotic opportunists dominate the deep-subsurface biosphere in South Africa.” Nature communications 6 (2015).

Contest

Write us a geoscience themed limerick! This is a family show, so remember...nothing that rhymes with “Nantucket” Please email us your limericks by August 12, 2016 and we’ll be judging them along with Dr. Katie Schearer, an english professor. The prize? One of the awesome creations from Chris at Taylor Custom. Thanks for listening everyone!

Contact us

Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - SWUNG Slack - [email protected]

John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman

Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin