• Mission
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Subscribe
  • Terms of Service
Conscious Life News
5-day Holosync Challenge
  • Home
  • Conscious Living
    • Activism
    • Animals and Pets
    • Conscious Evolution
    • Conscious Parenting
    • Happiness & Humor
    • Inspirational
    • Manifestation / LOA
    • Meditation
    • Peace & Human Rights
    • Relationships & Sex
    • Thrive
  • Economy
    • Business
    • Education
    • Loans and Frugal Living
    • Investing and Insurance
  • Environ.
    • Climate Change
    • Eco-Friendly
    • Farming & Gardening
    • Environmental Hazards
    • Nature & Wildlife
    • Preparedness
  • Govt.
    • Agencies & Systems
    • The Fed & Banking Cartel
    • Censorship
    • Govt. Corruption
    • Internet Control
    • Military Industrial Complex
    • Policies
    • Politics
    • Govt. Surveillance
    • Whistleblower
  • Health
    • Alternative Health Care
    • Big Pharma, CDC & FDA
    • COVID-19 Vaccine
    • Diet, Weight Loss, Obesity
    • Exercise and Fitness
    • Food, Drink & Nutrition
    • Healing & Natural Remedies
    • Herbs, Seeds & Spices
    • Human Energy Systems
    • Longevity & Life Extension
    • Mind-Body Connection
    • Pet and Animal Health
    • Prevention
    • Skin & Hair Care
  • Horoscopes
  • Media
    • Alternative Media
    • Books
    • Art and Music
    • Corporate Controlled Media
    • Films & TV
    • Internet
    • Social Media
  • Reality’s Edge
    • Afterlife & Past Lives
    • Ascension
    • Astrology & Numerology
    • Channeling & Readings
    • Dreams, ESP & Remote Viewing
    • Dying, NDE, & OBE
    • ETs, UFOs & Crop Circles
    • Mandela Effect
    • Mysteries
    • Predictions & Prophecies
    • Quantum Physics
    • Reality Shifts & Timelines
    • Spirituality and Religion
    • Angels & Spirits
  • Sci-Tech
    • Archaeology
    • Earth & Space
    • Futurism & Inspiring Inventions
    • Medical Advances & Procedures
    • Nature
    • Psychology-Psychiatry
    • Science
    • Technology
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Conscious Living
    • Activism
    • Animals and Pets
    • Conscious Evolution
    • Conscious Parenting
    • Happiness & Humor
    • Inspirational
    • Manifestation / LOA
    • Meditation
    • Peace & Human Rights
    • Relationships & Sex
    • Thrive
  • Economy
    • Business
    • Education
    • Loans and Frugal Living
    • Investing and Insurance
  • Environ.
    • Climate Change
    • Eco-Friendly
    • Farming & Gardening
    • Environmental Hazards
    • Nature & Wildlife
    • Preparedness
  • Govt.
    • Agencies & Systems
    • The Fed & Banking Cartel
    • Censorship
    • Govt. Corruption
    • Internet Control
    • Military Industrial Complex
    • Policies
    • Politics
    • Govt. Surveillance
    • Whistleblower
  • Health
    • Alternative Health Care
    • Big Pharma, CDC & FDA
    • COVID-19 Vaccine
    • Diet, Weight Loss, Obesity
    • Exercise and Fitness
    • Food, Drink & Nutrition
    • Healing & Natural Remedies
    • Herbs, Seeds & Spices
    • Human Energy Systems
    • Longevity & Life Extension
    • Mind-Body Connection
    • Pet and Animal Health
    • Prevention
    • Skin & Hair Care
  • Horoscopes
  • Media
    • Alternative Media
    • Books
    • Art and Music
    • Corporate Controlled Media
    • Films & TV
    • Internet
    • Social Media
  • Reality’s Edge
    • Afterlife & Past Lives
    • Ascension
    • Astrology & Numerology
    • Channeling & Readings
    • Dreams, ESP & Remote Viewing
    • Dying, NDE, & OBE
    • ETs, UFOs & Crop Circles
    • Mandela Effect
    • Mysteries
    • Predictions & Prophecies
    • Quantum Physics
    • Reality Shifts & Timelines
    • Spirituality and Religion
    • Angels & Spirits
  • Sci-Tech
    • Archaeology
    • Earth & Space
    • Futurism & Inspiring Inventions
    • Medical Advances & Procedures
    • Nature
    • Psychology-Psychiatry
    • Science
    • Technology
No Result
View All Result
Conscious Life News
No Result
View All Result
Home Environment Climate Change

Beavers Offer Lessons About Managing Water in a Changing Climate, Whether the Challenge Is Drought or Floods

by clnAdrian
January 25, 2022
in Climate Change, Eco-Friendly, Environment, Nature & Wildlife
Reading Time: 8 mins read
0 0
A A
0
Beavers Offer Lessons About Managing Water in a Changing Climate, Whether the Challenge Is Drought or Floods
1
SHARES
521
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on WhatsApp
Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Wetlands created by beavers, like this one in Amherst, Massachusetts, store floodwaters and provide habitat for animals and birds.
Christine Hatch, CC BY-ND

It’s no accident that both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology claim the beaver (Castor canadensis) as their mascots. Renowned engineers, beavers seem able to dam any stream, building structures with logs and mud that can flood large areas.

As climate change causes extreme storms in some areas and intense drought in others, scientists are finding that beavers’ small-scale natural interventions are valuable. In dry areas, beaver ponds restore moisture to the soil; in wet zones, their dams and ponds can help to slow floodwaters. These ecological services are so useful that land managers are translocating beavers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom to help restore ecosystems and make them more resilient to climate change.

Scientists estimate that hundreds of millions of beavers once dammed waterways across the Northern Hemisphere. They were hunted nearly to extinction for their fur in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and North America but are making comebacks today in many areas. As a geoscientist specializing in water resources, I think it’s important to understand how helpful beavers can be in the right places and to find ways for humans to coexist with them in developed areas.

Scientists are studying ways to use beavers to mitigate wildfire and drought risks in the western U.S.

How beavers alter landscapes

Beavers dam streams to create ponds, where they can construct their dome-shaped lodges in the water, keeping predators at a distance. When they create a pond, many other effects follow.

Newly flooded trees die but remain standing as bare “snags” where birds nest. The diverted streams create complicated interwoven channels of slow-moving water, tangled with logs and plants that provide hiding places for fish. The messy complexity behind a beaver dam creates many different kinds of habitats for creatures such as fish, birds, frogs, and insects.

Human dams often block fish passage upstream and downstream, even when the dams include fish ladders. But studies have shown that fish have no trouble migrating upstream past beaver dams. One reason may be that the fish can rest in slow pools and cool pond complexes after navigating the tallest parts of the dams.

The slow-moving water behind beaver dams is very effective at trapping sediment, which drops to the bottom of the pond. Studies measuring total organic carbon inactive and abandoned beaver meadows suggest that before the 1800s, active and abandoned beaver ponds across North America stored large amounts of carbon in sediment trapped behind them. This finding is relevant today as scientists look for ways to increase carbon storage in forests and other natural ecosystems.

Curved dam in a marsh, made of wood, grass and mud.
A beaver dam in Mason Neck State Park in Lorton, Virginia, creates a pond behind it that can spread out and slow down floodwaters during a storm.
Virginia State Parks, CC BY

Beavers may persist in one location for decades if they aren’t threatened by bears, cougars, or humans, but they will move on if food runs out near their pond. When abandoned beaver dams fail, the ponds drain and gradually become grassy meadows as plants from the surrounding land seed them.

Dried meadows can serve as floodplains for nearby rivers, allowing waters to spill out and provide forage and spawning areas for fish during high flows. Floodplain meadows are valuable habitats for ground-nesting birds and other species that depend on the river.

The value of slowing the flow

As human settlements expand, people often wish to make use of every acre. That typically means that they want either land that is solid and dry enough to farm or waterways they can navigate by boat. To create those conditions, humans remove floating logs from streams and install drains to draw water off of fields and roads as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But covering more and more land surfaces with barriers that don’t absorb water, such as pavement and rooftops, means that water flows into rivers and streams more quickly. Rainfall from an average storm can produce an intense river flow that erodes the banks and beds of waterways. And as climate change fuels more intense storms in many places, it will amplify this destructive impact.

Some developers limit this kind of damaging flow by using nature-based engineering principles, such as “ponding” water to intercept it and slow it down; spreading flows out more widely to reduce the water’s speed; and designing swales, or sunken spots, that allow water to sink into the ground. Beaver wetlands do all of these things, only better. Research in the United Kingdom has documented that beaver activity can reduce the flow of floodwaters from farmlands by up to 30%.

Beaver meadows and wetlands also help cool the ground around and beneath them. Wet soil in these zones contains a lot of organic matter from buried and decayed plants, which holds onto moisture longer than soil formed only from rocks and minerals. In my wetland research, I have found that after a storm, water entering the ground passes through pure mineral sand in hours to days but can remain in soils that are 80%-90% organic matter for as long as a month.

Cool, wet soil also serves as a buffer against wildfires. Recent studies in the western U.S. have found that vegetation in beaver-dammed river corridors is more fire-resistant than in areas without beavers because it is well watered and lush, so it doesn’t burn as easily. As a result, areas near beaver dams provide temporary refuge for wildlife when surrounding areas burn.

Making room for beavers

The ecological services that beavers provide are most valuable in zones where nobody minds if the landscape changes. But in the densely developed eastern U.S., where I work, it’s hard to find open areas where beaver ponds can spread out without flooding ditches or roads. Beavers also topple expensive landscaped trees and will feed on some cultivated crops, such as corn and soybeans.

Beavers are frequently blamed for flooding in developed areas, even though the real problem often is road design, not beaver dams. In such cases, removing the beavers doesn’t solve the problem.

Pipe in the middle of a flooded rural road
Debris carried by intense rains in July 2021 overtopped a beaver dam (still standing in the background) and washed out this undersized 3-foot culvert in western Massachusetts. It has since been replaced by a more resilient 9-foot structure.
Christine Hatch, CC BY-ND

Culvert guards, fences, and other exclusion devices can keep beavers a safe distance from infrastructure and maintain pond heights at a level that won’t flood adjoining areas. Road crossings over streams that are designed to let fish and other aquatic animals through instead of blocking them are beaver-friendly and will be resilient to climate change and extreme precipitation events. If these structures are large enough to let debris pass through, then beavers will build dams upstream instead, which can help catch floodwaters.

A growing body of research shows that setting aside pockets of land for beavers is good for wetland ecosystems, biodiversity, and rivers. I believe we can learn from beavers’ water management skills, coexist with them in our landscapes, and incorporate their natural engineering in response to weather and precipitation patterns disrupted by climate change.The Conversation

By Christine E. Hatch, Professor of Geosciences, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Tags: Beaver damsbeaver wetlandswater conservationwater managementwater resources
ShareTweetSend
Previous Post

Using Everything You Have To Look After Your Skin

Next Post

The Science of Longevity: Lessons From Methuselah

Related Posts

Did President Trump Expose Chemtrails on National TV?
Environmental Hazards

Did President Trump Expose Chemtrails on National TV?

March 13, 2025
Lifting the Lid on the Climate Hoax: A Close Look at “Climate: The Movie” (it’s included)
Climate Change

Lifting the Lid on the Climate Hoax: A Close Look at “Climate: The Movie” (it’s included)

March 25, 2024
Gregg Braden: How To Prepare For a Deep Cyber Attack & Global Grid Breakdown
Preparedness

Gregg Braden: How To Prepare For a Deep Cyber Attack & Global Grid Breakdown

March 3, 2024
How to Grow an Organic Food GARDEN from Scratch for FREE!  | Next Level Gardening
Farming & Gardening

How to Grow an Organic Food GARDEN from Scratch for FREE! | Next Level Gardening

February 26, 2024
Are Rainbow Lorikeets Falling from the Sky Due to 5G? (And Other Wildlife Deaths?)
Environmental Hazards

Are Rainbow Lorikeets Falling from the Sky Due to 5G? (And Other Wildlife Deaths?)

February 7, 2024
RFK Jr.: Americans’ Love Nature Can Unite Us
Nature & Wildlife

RFK Jr.: Americans’ Love Nature Can Unite Us

January 16, 2024
Next Post
The Science of Longevity: Lessons From Methuselah

The Science of Longevity: Lessons From Methuselah

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Conscious Life News

The mission of Conscious Life News is to be a global leader in the consciousness-raising of the planet.

Follow Us

Browse by Category

  • Activism
  • Afterlife & Past Lives
  • Agencies & Systems
  • Alternative Health Care
  • Alternative Media
  • Angels & Spirits
  • Animals and Pets
  • Archaeology
  • Art and Music
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Ascension
  • Astrology & Numerology
  • Astrology Overview
  • Big Pharma, CDC, FDA & NIH
  • Books
  • Business
  • Careers
  • Censorship
  • Channeling & Readings
  • Climate Change
  • Conscious Evolution
  • Conscious Living
  • Conscious Parenting
  • Corporate Controlled Media
  • COVID-19 Vaccine
  • Daily
  • Diet, Weight Loss, Obesity
  • Dreams, ESP & Remote Viewing
  • Dying, NDE, & OBE
  • Earth & Space
  • Eco-Friendly
  • Economy
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Environmental Hazards
  • ETs, UFOs & Crop Circles
  • Exercise and Fitness
  • Farming & Gardening
  • Featured
  • Federal Law
  • Films & TV
  • Food, Drink & Nutrition
  • Futurism & Inspiring Inventions
  • Government
  • Govt Censorship
  • Govt. Corruption
  • Govt. Surveillance
  • Happiness & Humor
  • Healing & Natural Remedies
  • Health
  • Herbs, Seeds & Spices
  • Home Maintenance, Repairs & Improvement
  • Horoscopes
  • Human Energy Systems
  • Inspirational
  • Internet
  • Internet Control
  • Investing and Insurance
  • Laws and Lawyers
  • Lifestyle and Fashion
  • Loans and Frugal Living
  • Longevity & Life Extension
  • Mandela Effect
  • Manifestation / LOA
  • Maya / Matrix / Virtual Reality
  • Media & Arts
  • Medical Advances & Procedures
  • Meditation
  • Military Industrial Complex
  • Mind-Body Connection
  • Monthly
  • Mysteries
  • Nature
  • Nature & Wildlife
  • News Flash
  • Peace & Human Rights
  • Pet and Animal Health
  • Policies
  • Politics
  • Predictions & Prophecies
  • Preparedness
  • Prevention
  • Psychology-Psychiatry
  • Quantum Physics
  • Reality Shifts & Timelines
  • Reality's Edge
  • Relationships & Sex
  • Sci-Tech
  • Science
  • Skin & Hair Care
  • Social Media
  • Spirituality and Religion
  • Stuff
  • Technology
  • The Fed & Banking Cartel
  • Thrive
  • Uncategorized
  • Weekly
  • Whistleblower
  • World

Recent News

Scorpio Full Moon Deep Dive Video + Zodiac Forecasts All Signs

Scorpio Full Moon Deep Dive Video + Zodiac Forecasts All Signs

May 11, 2025
Weekly Astrology Video WC 12th May 2025 + All Signs…

Weekly Astrology Video WC 12th May 2025 + All Signs…

May 11, 2025

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 ConsciousLifeNews.com - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.