Keynote Speaker: Professor Hsiao-Wen Wang
14th Annual River Restoration Symposium
Saturday 08 December 2018 9a-330p, Rm 112 Wurster Hall UC Berkeley
Description:
Reservoirs play a critically important role in supplying water for human uses. However, sedimentation limits storage capabilities and increases risk for aging infrastructure. Many large reservoirs were designed to accommodate 100 years of sediment accumulation and can store centuries worth of incoming sediment before filling up completely. However, such long sedimentation horizons are rarely the case in areas with high sediment yields, including some basins in the US. The sediment yields in Taiwan are among the highest in the world, resulting in rapid filling of reservoirs, motivating Taiwan to implement sediment management measures sooner than elsewhere. In addition to loss of reservoir capacity, by trapping sediments, dams deprive downstream reaches of their natural sediment loads, inducing channel incision, loss of aquatic habitats, and accelerated coastal erosion and loss of land in deltas. This presentation provides insights into sediment management strategies globally and experience with sediment management efforts in Taiwan, where high erosion rates have forced the issue earlier than elsewhere, thereby providing early insights into management issues that are emerging worldwide, followed by comparisons with emerging sediment issues in California and the US generally.
Keynote Speaker Bio:
Hsiao-Wen Wang is Associate Professor at Department of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering of the National Cheng Kung University. Her research interests include hydraulics, sediment transport and management, river restoration and ecohydraulics. She is a grantee of Global Explorer Grant of National Geographic Society 2017/2018 and now a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley through the Fulbright Senior Research Program working on resolving the conflicts related to land use between green energy and other core necessities for environmental sustainability.