The impacts of large dams on local climate in Artvin

Abstract

Increasing human population inevitably results in a number of environmental changes in the Earth. Throughout the history, human-being has changed the land use and damaged the environment because of demands for energy and raw material. This change may be in many different ways such as mining activities, agriculture or settlement. Amongst them, large dam construction is one of the most important activities damaging the environment for providing potable and irrigation water, controlling floods as well as generating hydropower. While the dams provide above mentioned benefits, they may significantly change the environmental condition through affecting local climate. The aim of the present study is to determine the impacts of large dams on local climate in Artvin, Turkey. To this end, 13 meteorological factors from three climate stations were assessed for the period between 1987 and 2017. Mann-Whitney-U test and trend analyses were performed to determine the impact of constructed dams on Artvin's climate. In addition, two-way ANOVA was conducted to whether there is a significant difference among the stations. As a result; most factors regarding temperature, precipitation, wind speed, cloudy days, snow-covered days and clear days were significantly differed after dam constructions (p<0.05). Considering control stations, on the other hand, only three factors regarding maximum daily precipitation, wind speed, snow-covered days showed variation among the stations. It was seen that daily maximum winter precipitation and the number of snow-covered days in spring decreased by 29.2% and 17.8% after constructed large dams in Artvin province. Furthermore, summer wind speed increased by about 0.1 m/s. These results were also supported by trend analyses in terms of coincidences between the years for the operation of dams and the change trend starts.