Canal News Bulletin: 1-15 September 2013 page # 4

Wednesday 18 September 2013

1-15 September 2013 page # 4

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0Part of the Ardèche River, in south-central France

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An unspecified river in Bangladesh

RIVER / INTRODUCTION

A river is a natural watercourse,usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including stream, creek, brook, rivulet, tributary and rill; there is no general rule that defines what can be called a river, although in some countries or communities a stream may be defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location; one example is "burn" in Scotland and northeast England. Sometimes a river is said to be larger than a creek,but this is not always the case, because of vagueness in the language.Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Water within a river is generally collected from precipitation through a drainage basin from surface runoff and other sources such as groundwater recharge, springs, and the release of stored water in natural ice and snowpacks (e.g., from glaciers). Potamology is the scientific study of rivers.

TOPOGRAPHY

The water in a river is usually confined to a channel, made up of a stream bed between banks. In larger rivers there is also a wider floodplain shaped by flood-waters over-topping the channel. Flood plains may be very wide in relation to the size of the river channel. This distinction between river channel and floodplain can be blurred especially in urban areas where the floodplain of a river channel can become greatly developed by housing and industry. The term upriver refers to the direction leading to the source of the river, which is against the direction of flow. Likewise, the term downriver describes the direction towards the mouth of the river, in which the current flows.

The river channel typically contains a single stream of water, but some rivers flow as several interconnecting streams of water, producing a braided river. Extensive braided rivers are now found in only a few regions worldwide, such as the South Island of New Zealand.

They also occur on peneplains and some of the larger river deltas. Anastamosing rivers are similar to braided rivers and are also quite rare. They have multiple sinuous channels carrying large volumes of sediment.

A river flowing in its channel is a source of energy which acts on the river channel to change its shape and form. According to Brahm's law (sometimes called Airy's law), the mass of objects that may be carried away by a river is proportional to the sixth power of the river flow speed. Thus, when the speed of flow increases two times, it can transport 64 times larger (i.e., more massive) objects.

In mountainous torrential zones this can be seen as erosion channels through hard rocks and the creation of sands and gravels from the destruction of larger rocks. In U-shaped glaciated valleys, the subsequent river valley can often easily be identified by the V-shaped channel that it has carved. In the middle reaches where the river may flow over flatter land, meanders may form through erosion of the river banks and deposition on the inside of bends.

Sometimes the river will cut off a loop, shortening the channel and forming an oxbow lake or billabong. Rivers that carry large amounts of sediment may develop conspicuous deltas at their mouths, if conditions permit. Rivers whose mouths are in saline tidal waters may form estuaries.

Throughout the course of the river, the total volume of water transported downstream will often be a combination of the free water flow together with a substantial contribution flowing through sub-surface rocks and gravels that underlie the river and its floodplain (called the hyporheic zone). For many rivers in large valleys, this unseen component of flow may greatly exceed the visible flow.

Most but not all rivers flow on the surface. Subterranean rivers flow underground in caves or caverns. Such rivers are frequently found in regions with limestone geologic formations. Subglacial streams are the braided rivers that flow at the beds of glaciers and ice sheets, permitting meltwater to be discharged at the front of the glacier. Because of the gradient in pressure due to the overlying weight of the glacier, such streams can even flow uphill.

An intermittent river (or ephemeral river) only flows occasionally and can be dry for several years at a time. These rivers are found in regions with limited or highly variable rainfall, or can occur because of geologic conditions such as having a highly permeable river bed. Some ephemeral rivers flow during the summer months but not in the winter. Such rivers are typically fed from chalk aquifers which recharge from winter rainfall. In the UK these rivers are called Bournes and give their name to place such as Bournemouth and Eastbourne.

River bank repair

Rivers have been classified by many criteria including their topography, their biotic status, their relevance to white water rafting or canoeing activities.

Rivers can generally be classified as either alluvial, bedrock, or some mix of the two. Alluvial rivers have channels and floodplains that are self-formed in unconsolidated or weakly consolidated sediments. They erode their banks and deposit material on bars and their floodplains. Bedrock rivers form when the river downcuts through the modern sediments and into the underlying bedrock. This occurs in regions that have experienced some kind of uplift (thereby steepening river gradients) or in which a particular hard lithology causes a river to have a steepened reach that has not been covered in modern alluvium. Bedrock rivers very often contain alluvium on their beds; this material is important in eroding and sculpting the channel. Rivers that go through patches of bedrock and patches of deep alluvial cover are classified as mixed bedrock-alluvial.

Alluvial rivers can be further classified by their channel pattern as meandering, braided, wandering, anastomose, or straight. The morphology of an alluvial river reach is controlled by a combination of sediment supply, substrate composition, discharge, vegetation, and bed aggradation.

At the turn of the 20th century William Morris Davis devised the "cycle of erosion" method of classifying rivers based on their "age". Although Davis's system is still found in many books today, after the 1950s and 1960s it became increasingly criticized and rejected by geomorphologists. His scheme did not produce testable hypotheses and was therefore deemed non-scientific.Examples of Davis's river "ages" include:

Youthful river: A river with a steep gradient that has very few tributaries and flows quickly. Its channels erode deeper rather than wider. Examples include the Brazos, Trinity and Ebro rivers.

Mature river: A river with a gradient that is less steep than those of youthful rivers and flows more slowly. A mature river is fed by many tributaries and has more discharge than a youthful river. Its channels erode wider rather than deeper. Examples include the Mississippi, Saint Lawrence, Danube, Ohio, Thames and Paraná rivers.

Old river: A river with a low gradient and low erosive energy. Old rivers are characterized by flood plains. Examples include the Yellow, Ganges, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and Nile rivers.

Rejuvenated river: A river with a gradient that is raised by tectonic uplift.

The way in which a river's characteristics vary between the upper course and lower course of a river are summarized by the Bradshaw model. Power-law relationships between channel slope, depth, and width are given as a function of discharge by "river regime".

There are very many systems of classification based on biotic conditions typically assigning classes from the most oligotrophic or unpolluted through to the most eutrophic or polluted.Other systems are based on a whole eco-system approach such as developed by the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment.In Europe, the requirements of the Water Framework Directive has led to the development of a wide range of classification methods including classifications based on fishery status.A system of river zonation used in francophone communities. divides rivers into three primary zones:

The crenon is the uppermost zone at the source of the river. It is further divided into the eucrenon (spring or boil zone) and the hypocrenon (brook or headstream zone). These areas are characterized by low temperatures, reduced oxygen content and slow moving water.

The rhithron is the upstream portion of the river that follows the crenon. It is characterized by relatively cool temperatures, high oxygen levels, and fast, turbulent flow.The potamon is the remaining downstream stretch of river. It is characterized by warmer temperatures, lower oxygen levels, slow flow and sandier bottoms.The International Scale of River Difficulty is used to rate the challenges of navigation—particularly those with rapids. Class I is the easiest and Class VI is the hardest.

The Strahler Stream Order ranks rivers based on the connectivity and hierarchy of contributing tributaries. Headwaters are first order while the Amazon River is twelfth order. Approximately 80% of the rivers and streams in the world are of the first and second order.

Leisure activities on the River Avon at Avon Valley Country Park, Keynsham, United Kingdom. A boat giving trips to the public passes a moored private boat.

The chemistry of rivers is complex and depends on inputs from the atmosphere, the geology through which it travels and the inputs from man's activities. The chemistry of the water has a large impact on the ecology of that water for both plants and animals and it also affects the uses that may be made of the river water. Understanding and characterising river water chemistry requires a well designed and managed sampling and analysis.

Like many other Aquatic ecosystems, rivers too are under increasing threat of pollution. According to a study of the WWF's Global Freshwater Programme, the 10 most polluted rivers are: Ganges, Indus, Yangtze, Salween-Nu, Mekong-Lancang, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, Río de la Plata, Danube, Nile-Lake Victoria, and the Murray-Darling.Some rivers generate brackish water by having their river mouth in the ocean. This, in effect creates a unique environment in which certain species are found.

Flooding is a natural part of a river's cycle. The majority of the erosion of river channels and the erosion and deposition on the associated floodplains occur during flood stage. In many developed areas, human activity has changed river channel form, altering different magnitudes and frequencies of flooding. Some examples of this are the building of levees, the straightening of channels, and the draining of natural wetlands. In many cases human activities in rivers and floodplains have dramatically increased the risk of flooding. Straightening rivers allows water to flow more rapidly downstream increasing the risk of flooding places further downstream. Building on flood plains removes flood storage which again exacerbates downstream flooding. The building of levees may only protect the area behind the levees and not those further downstream. Levees and flood-banks can also increase flooding upstream because of back-water pressure as the upstream water has to squeeze between the levees.

A common misconception is that most, or even all, rivers flow from north to south.Rivers in fact flow downhill regardless of compass direction. Sometimes downhill is from north to south, but equally it can be from south to north, and usually is a complex meandering path involving all directions of the compass.Three of the ten longest rivers in the world—the Nile, Yenisei, and Ob—flow north, as do other major rivers such as the Rhine, Mackenzie, and Nelson.

Rivers flowing downhill, from river source to river mouth, do not necessarily take the shortest path. For alluvial streams, straight and braided rivers have very low sinuosity and flow directly down hill, while meandering rivers flow from side to side across a valley. Bedrock rivers typically flow in either a fractal pattern, or a pattern that is determined by weaknesses in the bedrock, such as faults, fractures, or more erodible layers.

Volumetric flow rate, also called discharge, volume flow rate, and rate of water flow, is the volume of water which passes through a given cross-section of the river channel per unit time. It is typically measured in cubic meters per second (cumec) or cubic feet per second (cfs), where 1 m3/s = 35.51 ft3/s; it is sometimes also measured in litres or gallons per second.

Volumetric flow rate can be thought of as the mean velocity of the flow through a given cross-section, times that cross-sectional area. Mean velocity can be approximated through the use of the Law of the Wall. In general, velocity increases with the depth (or hydraulic radius) and slope of the river channel, while the cross-sectional area scales with the depth and the width: the double-counting of depth shows the importance of this variable in determining the discharge through the channel.

Sediment yield is the total quantity of particulate matter (suspended or bedload) reaching the outlet of a drainage basin over a fixed time frame. Yield is usually expressed as kilograms per square kilometre per year. Sediment delivery processes are affected by a myriad of factors such as drainage area size, basin slope, climate, sediment type (lithology), vegetation cover, and human land use / management practices. The theoretical concept of the 'sediment delivery ratio' (ratio between yield and total amount of sediment eroded) captures the fact that not all of the sediment eroded within a catchment reaches the outlet (due to, for example, deposition on floodplains). Such storage opportunities are typically increased in catchments of larger size, thus leading to a lower yield and sediment delivery ratio.

Rivers are often managed or controlled to make them more useful, or less disruptive, to human activity.Dams or weirs may be built to control the flow, store water, or extract energy.Levees, known as dikes in Europe, may be built to prevent river water from flowing on floodplains or floodways.Canals connect rivers to one another for water transfer or navigation.River courses may be modified to improve navigation, or straightened to increase the flow rate.River management is a continuous activity as rivers tend to 'undo' the modifications made by people. Dredged channels silt up, sluice mechanisms deteriorate with age, levees and dams may suffer seepage or catastrophic failure. The benefits sought through managing rivers may often be offset by the social and economic costs of mitigating the bad effects of such management. As an example, in parts of the developed world, rivers have been confined within channels to free up flat flood-plain land for development. Floods can inundate such development at high financial cost and often with loss of life.Rivers are increasingly managed for habitat conservation, as they are critical for many aquatic and riparian plants, resident and migratory fishes, waterfowl, birds of prey, migrating birds, and many mammals.

Nile River delta, as seen from Earth orbit. The Nile is an example of a wave-dominated delta that has the classic Greek delta (Δ) shape after which River deltas were named

Melting toe of Athabasca Glacier, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada.

Confluence of Indus River. The Indus is the lower river in this picture

A false-color satellite photograph of the Amazon River in Brazil.

The Tigris River near Hasankeyf, in southeastern Turkey

DAMS........History and overview

History

A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees (also known as dikes) are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are often used in conjunction with dams to generate electricity. A dam can also be used to collect water or for storage of water which can be evenly distributed between locations.

The word dam can be traced back to Middle English,and before that, from Middle Dutch, as seen in the names of many old cities.Early dam building took place in Mesopotamia and the Middle East. Dams were used to control the water level, for Mesopotamia's weather affected the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and could be quite unpredictable.

The earliest known dam is the Jawa Dam in Jordan, 100 kilometres (62 mi) northeast of the capital Amman. This gravity dam featured a 4.5 m (15 ft) high and 1 m (3 ft 3 in) wide stone wall, supported by a 50 m (160 ft) wide earth rampart. The structure is dated to 3000 BC.The Ancient Egyptian Sadd-el-Kafara Dam at Wadi Al-Garawi, located about 25 km (16 mi) south of Cairo, was 102 m (335 ft) long at its base and 87 m (285 ft) wide. The structure was built around 2800 or 2600 B.C.as a diversion dam for flood control, but was destroyed by heavy rain during construction or shortly afterwards.By the mid-late third century BC, an intricate water-management system within Dholavira in modern day India, was built. The system included 16 reservoirs, dams and various channels for collecting water and storing it.

Roman dam construction was characterized by "the Romans' ability to plan and organize engineering construction on a grand scale".Roman planners introduced the then novel concept of large reservoir dams which could secure a permanent water supply for urban settlements also over the dry season.Their pioneering use of water-proof hydraulic mortar and particularly Roman concrete allowed for much larger dam structures than previously built,such as the Lake Homs Dam, possibly the largest water barrier to that date,and the Harbaqa Dam, both in Roman Syria. The highest Roman dam was the Subiaco Dam near Rome; its record height of 50 m (160 ft) remained unsurpassed until its accidental destruction in 1305.

Roman engineers made routine use of ancient standard designs like embankment dams and masonry gravity dams.Apart from that, they displayed a high degree of inventiveness, introducing most of the other basic dam designs which had been unknown until then. These include arch-gravity dams,arch dams,buttress dams and multiple arch buttress dams,all of which were known and employed by the 2nd century AD (see List of Roman dams). Roman workforces also were the first to build dam bridges, such as the Bridge of Valerian in IranEflatun Pınar is a Hittite dam and spring temple near Konya, Turkey. It's thought to be from the time of the Hittite empire between the 15th and 13 century BC.

The Kallanai is constructed of unhewn stone, over 300 m (980 ft) long, 4.5 m (15 ft) high and 20 m (66 ft) wide, across the main stream of the Kaveri river in Tamil Nadu, South India. The basic structure dates to the 2nd century AD and is considered one of the oldest water-diversion or water-regulator structures in the world, which is still in use.The purpose of the dam was to divert the waters of the Kaveri across the fertile Delta region for irrigation via canals.

Du Jiang Yan is the oldest surviving irrigation system in China that included a dam that directed waterflow. It was finished in 251 B.C. A large earthen dam, made by the Prime Minister of Chu (state), Sunshu Ao, flooded a valley in modern-day northern Anhui province that created an enormous irrigation reservoir 100 km (62 mi) in circumference), a reservoir that is still present today.

In Iran, bridge dams such as the Band-e Kaisar were used to provide hydropower through water wheels, which often powered water-raising mechanisms. One of the first was the Roman-built dam bridge in Dezful,which could raise water 50 cubits in height for the water supply to all houses in the town. Also diversion dams were known.Milling dams were introduced which the Muslim engineers called the Pul-i-Bulaiti. The first was built at Shustar on the River Karun, Iran, and many of these were later built in other parts of the Islamic world.Water was conducted from the back of the dam through a large pipe to drive a water wheel and watermill.In the 10th century, Al-Muqaddasi described several dams in Persia. He reported that one in Ahwaz was more than 910 m (3,000 ft) long,and that and it had many water-wheels raising the water into aqueducts through which it flowed into reservoirs of the city.Another one, the Band-i-Amir dam, provided irrigation for 300 villages.

In the Netherlands, a low-lying country, dams were often applied to block rivers in order to regulate the water level and to prevent the sea from entering the marsh lands. Such dams often marked the beginning of a town or city because it was easy to cross the river at such a place, and often gave rise to the respective place's names in Dutch. For instance the Dutch capital Amsterdam (old name Amstelredam) started with a dam through the river Amstel in the late 12th century, and Rotterdam started with a dam through the river Rotte, a minor tributary of the Nieuwe Maas. The central square of Amsterdam, covering the original place of the 800 year old dam, still carries the name Dam Square or simply the Dam.French engineer Benoît Fourneyron developed the first successful water turbine in 1832. The era of large dams was initiated after Hoover Dam was completed on the Colorado River near Las Vegas in 1936. By 1997, there were an estimated 800,000 dams worldwide, some 40,000 of them over 15 m (49 ft) high.

Types of dams

Dams can be formed by human agency, natural causes, or even by the intervention of wildlife such as beavers. Man-made dams are typically classified according to their size (height), intended purpose or structure.

By structure

Based on structure and material used, dams are classified as timber dams, arch-gravity dams, embankment dams or masonry dams, with several subtypes.

Arch dams In the arch dam, stability is obtained by a combination of arch and gravity action. If the upstream face is vertical the entire weight of the dam must be carried to the foundation by gravity, while the distribution of the normal hydrostatic pressure between vertical cantilever and arch action will depend upon the stiffness of the dam in a vertical and horizontal direction. When the upstream face is sloped the distribution is more complicated. The normal component of the weight of the arch ring may be taken by the arch action, while the normal hydrostatic pressure will be distributed as described above. For this type of dam, firm reliable supports at the abutments (either buttress or canyon side wall) are more important. The most desirable place for an arch dam is a narrow canyon with steep side walls composed of sound rock.[28] The safety of an arch dam is dependent on the strength of the side wall abutments, hence not only should the arch be well seated on the side walls but also the character of the rock should be carefully inspected.

Two types of single-arch dams are in use, namely the constant-angle and the constant-radius dam. The constant-radius type employs the same face radius at all elevations of the dam, which means that as the channel grows narrower towards the bottom of the dam the central angle subtended by the face of the dam becomes smaller. Jones Falls Dam, in Canada, is a constant radius dam. In a constant-angle dam, also known as a variable radius dam, this subtended angle is kept a constant and the variation in distance between the abutments at various levels are taken care of by varying the radii. Constant-radius dams are much less common than constant-angle dams. Parker Dam is a constant-angle arch dam.

A similar type is the double-curvature or thin-shell dam. Wildhorse Dam near Mountain City, Nevada in the United States is an example of the type. This method of construction minimizes the amount of concrete necessary for construction but transmits large loads to the foundation and abutments. The appearance is similar to a single-arch dam but with a distinct vertical curvature to it as well lending it the vague appearance of a concave lens as viewed from downstream.

The multiple-arch dam consists of a number of single-arch dams with concrete buttresses as the supporting abutments, as for example the Daniel-Johnson Dam, Québec, Canada. The multiple-arch dam does not require as many buttresses as the hollow gravity type, but requires good rock foundation because the buttress loads are heavy.

Gravity,Arch-gravity,Barrage, and Embankment dams

Gravity dams

In a gravity dam, the force that holds the dam in place against the push from the water is Earth's gravity pulling down on the mass of the dam.The water presses laterally (downstream) on the dam, tending to overturn the dam by rotating about its toe (a point at the bottom downstream side of the dam). The dam's weight counteracts that force, tending to rotate the dam the other way about its toe. The designer ensures that the dam is heavy enough that gravity wins that contest. In engineering terms, that is true whenever the resultant of the forces of gravity and water pressure on the dam acts in a line that passes upstream of the toe of the dam.

Furthermore, the designer tries to shape the dam so if one were to consider the part of dam above any particular height to be a whole dam itself, that dam also would be held in place by gravity. i.e. there is no tension in the upstream face of the dam holding the top of the dam down. The designer does this because it is usually more practical to make a dam of material essentially just piled up than to make the material stick together against vertical tension.Note that the shape that prevents tension in the upstream face also eliminates a balancing compression stress in the downstream face, providing additional economy.The designer also ensures that the toe of the dam is sunk deep enough in the earth that it does not slide forward.For this type of dam, it is essential to have an impervious foundation with high bearing strength.When situated on a suitable site, a gravity dam can prove to be a better alternative to other types of dams. When built on a carefully studied foundation, the gravity dam probably represents the best developed example of dam building. Since the fear of flood is a strong motivator in many regions, gravity dams are being built in some instances where an arch dam would have been more economical.

Gravity dams are classified as "solid" or "hollow" and are generally made of either concrete or masonry. This is called "zoning". The core of the dam is zoned depending on the availability of locally available materials, foundation conditions and the material attributes. The solid form is the more widely used of the two, though the hollow dam is frequently more economical to construct. Gravity dams can also be classified as "overflow" (spillway) and "non-overflow." Grand Coulee Dam is a solid gravity dam and Itaipu Dam is a hollow gravity dam.

Arch-gravity dams

A gravity dam can be combined with an arch dam into an arch-gravity dam for areas with massive amounts of water flow but less material available for a purely gravity dam.

Barrage dams

A barrage dam is a special kind of dam which consists of a line of large gates that can be opened or closed to control the amount of water passing the dam. The gates are set between flanking piers which are responsible for supporting the water load. They are often used to control and stabilize water flow for irrigation systems.

Barrages that are built at the mouth of rivers or lagoons to prevent tidal incursions or utilize the tidal flow for tidal power are known as tidal barrages.

Embankment dam

Embankment dams are made from compacted earth, and have two main types, rock-fill and earth-fill dams. Embankment dams rely on their weight to hold back the force of water, like the gravity dams made from concrete.

Rock-fill dams

Rock-fill dams are embankments of compacted free-draining granular earth with an impervious zone. The earth utilized often contains a large percentage of large particles hence the term rock-fill. The impervious zone may be on the upstream face and made of masonry, concrete, plastic membrane, steel sheet piles, timber or other material. The impervious zone may also be within the embankment in which case it is referred to as a core. In the instances where clay is utilized as the impervious material the dam is referred to as a composite dam. To prevent internal erosion of clay into the rock fill due to seepage forces, the core is separated using a filter. Filters are specifically graded soil designed to prevent the migration of fine grain soil particles. When suitable material is at hand, transportation is minimized leading to cost savings during construction. Rock-fill dams are resistant to damage from earthquakes. However, inadequate quality control during construction can lead to poor compaction and sand in the embankment which can lead to liquefaction of the rock-fill during an earthquake. Liquefaction potential can be reduced by keeping susceptible material from being saturated, and by providing adequate compaction during construction. An example of a rock-fill dam is New Melones Dam in California.

Concrete-face rock-fill dams,A concrete-face rock-fill dam (CFRD) is a rock-fill dam with concrete slabs on its upstream face. This design offers the concrete slab as an impervious wall to prevent leakage and also a structure without concern for uplift pressure. In addition, the CFRD design is flexible for topography, faster to construct and less costly than earth-fill dams. The CFRD originated during the California Gold Rush in the 1860s when miners constructed rock-fill timber-face dams for sluice operations. The timber was later replaced by concrete as the design was applied to irrigation and power schemes. As CFRD designs grew in height during the 1960s, the fill was compacted and the slab's horizontal and vertical joints were replaced with improved vertical joints. In the last few decades, the design has become popular.Currently, the tallest CFRD in the world is the 233 m (764 ft) tall Shuibuya Dam in China which was completed in 2008,

Earth-fill dams,Earth-fill dams, also called earthen, rolled-earth or simply earth dams, are constructed as a simple embankment of well compacted earth. A homogeneous rolled-earth dam is entirely constructed of one type of material but may contain a drain layer to collect seep water. A zoned-earth dam has distinct parts or zones of dissimilar material, typically a locally plentiful shell with a watertight clay core. Modern zoned-earth embankments employ filter and drain zones to collect and remove seep water and preserve the integrity of the downstream shell zone. An outdated method of zoned earth dam construction utilized a hydraulic fill to produce a watertight core. Rolled-earth dams may also employ a watertight facing or core in the manner of a rock-fill dam. An interesting type of temporary earth dam occasionally used in high latitudes is the frozen-core dam, in which a coolant is circulated through pipes inside the dam to maintain a watertight region of permafrost within it.

Tarbela Dam is a large dam on the Indus River in Pakistan. It is located about 50 km (31 mi) northwest of Islamabad, and a height of 485 ft (148 m) above the river bed and a reservoir size of 95 sq mi (250 km2) makes it the largest earth filled dam in the world. The principal element of the project is an embankment 9,000 feet (2743 meters) long with a maximum height of 465 feet (143 meters). The total volume of earth and rock used for the project is approximately 200 million cubic yards (152.8 million cu. Meters) which makes it the largest man made structure in the world , except for the Great Chinese Wall which consumed somewhat more material.Because earthen dams can be constructed from materials found on-site or nearby, they can be very cost-effective in regions where the cost of producing or bringing in concrete would be prohibitive.

Asphalt-concrete core,A third type of embankment dam is built with asphalt concrete core. The majority of such dams are built with rock and/or gravel as the main fill material. Almost 100 dams of this design have now been built worldwide since the first such dam was completed in 1962. All asphalt-concrete core dams built so far have an excellent performance record. The type of asphalt used is a viscoelastic-plastic material that can adjust to the movements and deformations imposed on the embankment as a whole, and to settlements in the foundation. The flexible properties of the asphalt make such dams especially suited in earthquake regions.