All posts tagged: dam

A vast dam across the Bering Strait could stop the AMOC collapsing

A vast dam across the Bering Strait could stop the AMOC collapsing

Published by skeptic

The Bering Strait separates Alaska and Russia Ocean Color/OB.DAAC/OBPG/NASA It would be an engineering project on a truly epic scale, but we may one day need to consider building a dam between Alaska and eastern Russia. The audacious proposal would be designed to stave off the worst consequences of the collapse of a vital ocean current, and researchers have been mulling it over this week at a major conference. The idea comes from Jelle Soons and his colleague Henk Dijkstra at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who study the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC. This current system, which includes the Gulf Stream, is a major reason why northern Europe has a relatively mild climate for its latitude. However, we know the current is weakening. There is huge uncertainty about what would happen if it collapses, but some models suggest it could see temperatures in northern Europe drastically plunge. Soons thought a dam could be a possible intervention after hearing about how during the Pliocene era, from roughly 5.3 to 2.6 million years …

How the Hoover Dam Works: A 3D Animated Introduction

How the Hoover Dam Works: A 3D Animated Introduction

Published by José Betancourt

When it comes to tourist pil­grim­age sites in the Unit­ed States, the Hoover Dam may not quite rank up there with the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, Mount Rush­more, the Grand Canyon, or Dis­ney­land. But that’s not due to a lack of impor­tance, nor even a lack of impres­sive­ness. Prop­er appre­ci­a­tion of its man-made majesty, how­ev­er, requires an under­stand­ing of not just the vital func­tion it serves, but the enor­mous task of its con­struc­tion. The guides at the Hoover Dam have been trained to explain just that to its many vis­i­tors, of course, but all of us could ben­e­fit from going in pre­pared with a lit­tle knowl­edge. Watch the hour-long video on the dam’s design and con­struc­tion from Ani­ma­graffs above, and you may be pre­pared with enough knowl­edge to tell the guides a thing or two. Ani­ma­graffs is the YoT­tube chan­nel of Jacob O’Neal, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its acclaimed expla­na­tions on a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry explor­er’s sail­ing ship and the Gold­en Gate Bridge, anoth­er icon­ic con­struc­tion project of the Great Depres­sion. Like those, …

More Than 5,500 Residents Ordered To Evacuate In Hawaii Over Dodgy Dam

More Than 5,500 Residents Ordered To Evacuate In Hawaii Over Dodgy Dam

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by T.J. Muscaro via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), More than 5,500 people on Hawaii’s most populous island have been ordered to evacuate on March 20 as weather conditions continue to worsen and threaten the integrity of a 120-year-old dam. Map of the evacuation zone in response to the risk of a dam failure amid torrential rains on Oahu, Hawaii, on March 20, 2026. Screenshot/Hawaii Emergency Management Agency That island, Oahu, which is home to the capital, Honolulu, is forecast to face severe rains capable of bringing risks of flash flooding and landslides over the next several days. The National Weather Service predicted that Oahu could receive four to 10 inches of rain between March 20 and March 23. This comes after the island received more than 26 inches of rain between March 10 and March 16. The life-threatening inundation is affecting much of the archipelago. “Much of the state is already saturated with rain from last week’s storm, and this additional rain will bring a major risk of flash flooding and landslides,” Hawaii’s …

Lucy Raven’s New Film Captures a Dam Removal in the Pacific Northwest

Lucy Raven’s New Film Captures a Dam Removal in the Pacific Northwest

Published by Jenni Sidey

Lucy Raven’s film work Murderers Bar (2025) captures the removal of a dam in the Pacific Northwest and the dramatic release of water that takes the form of a newly born river as it rushes from Oregon through Northern California on its way to the Pacific Ocean. The 42-minute piece is the final part of a trilogy titled “The Drumfire,” which also includes the 2021 film Ready Mix, a meditation on processes involved in making concrete at a plant in Idaho, and the 2022 films Demolition of a Wall (Album 1 & 2), which focus on shockwaves visible in the air at an explosives testing range in New Mexico. Related Articles Murderers Bar is currently on view at the Power Plant in Toronto through March 22 and will travel to the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston for an exhibition starting May 20. (It previously showed last year at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Barbican in London.) A.i.A. spoke with Raven about Murderers Bar and how it relates to a trilogy concerned with matter in …

Ten Lost Roman Wonders: The World’s Longest Tunnel, Tallest Dam, Widest-Spanning Bridge & More

Ten Lost Roman Wonders: The World’s Longest Tunnel, Tallest Dam, Widest-Spanning Bridge & More

Published by José Betancourt

Apart from a few bridges that still work, the infra­struc­tur­al achieve­ments of the Roman Empire exist, for us, most­ly as ruins. With a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion, those his­toric sites give us a clear enough sense of the empire’s sheer might, but if we want to go deep­er, we should then look into the numer­ous Roman con­struc­tions that haven’t sur­vived at all. In the video below from his chan­nel Told in Stone, ancient-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Gar­rett Ryan gives his per­son­al top sev­en “lost Roman won­ders,” begin­ning with Trajan’s Bridge, whose length of more than a kilo­me­ter across the Danube made it the longest bridge ever built at that time: a project of ambi­tions befit­ting a man that his­to­ry remem­bers as one of the “Five Good Emper­ors.” No such sta­tus for Nero, though he did com­mis­sion the Subi­a­co Dams. Nec­es­sary to cre­ate a series of arti­fi­cial lakes beneath the infa­mous ruler’s vil­la, they were the high­est dams in exis­tence until the Mid­dle Ages. Hadri­an’s more pub­lic-mind­ed white-mar­ble tem­ple at Cyz­i­cus in mod­ern-day Turkey was known as unusu­al­ly splen­did even by …

NASA satellites help scientists observe how rivers carve the Earth

NASA satellites help scientists observe how rivers carve the Earth

Published by Jenni Sidey

A satellite built to measure Earth’s water has started answering a different kind of question. “What’s the shape of water?” Specifically, “How is water reshaping the ground beneath it?” NASA launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite, known as SWOT, in 2022. Its main job is to measure the height and spread of water across the planet. Now, Virginia Tech geoscientists say the same measurements can help you see rivers at work as builders and destroyers of landscapes. “We wanted to show how the satellite could be used in ways that it wasn’t primarily designed for,” said postdoctoral associate Molly Stroud, first author of a recent publication in the Geological Society of America Today. “How are rivers and streams moving sediment and shaping the Earth’s surface?” That question sits at the center of fluvial geomorphology, the field that studies how flowing water sculpts land. For years, this work often felt slow and local. Researchers might spend days measuring one reach of one river. They would map cross sections, estimate sediment movement, and try to …