ESSIC Visiting Assistant Research Engineer Thomas Wild recently published a paper titled “Balancing Hydropower Development and Ecological Impacts in the Mekong: Tradeoffs for Sambor Mega Dam” in Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management.
The paper focuses on navigating energy-ecology-sediment tradeoffs in the Mekong River basin in search of ecologically-focused hydropower alternatives more balanced than current infrastructure and proposed operations. Contributions of the paper include how to think about modifying planned dam siting/design/operation to achieve balanced outcomes and how to define ecological performance measures.
In addition to his work with ESSIC, Wild is also jointly appointed as a research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute. His background is in systems analysis and hydrology, with a focus on developing and applying novel modeling tools and decision support frameworks for solving complex systems problems that occur at the intersection of disciplines.
To read the paper, see here: “Balancing Hydropower Development and Ecological Impacts in the Mekong: Tradeoffs for Sambor Mega Dam”. To see Cornell’s press release, click here.
