Media Center

Links and Sources

Why is this Historic?

Impact on Global Environment / Mitigating Climate Change

  • “Small Dam Removal As A Tool For Climate Change Resilience”, Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2023.

  • Abbott, K., Zaidel, P., Roy, A., Houle, K., & Nislow, K. H. (2022). Investigating impacts of small dams and dam removal on dissolved oxygen in streams. Plos One. 

  • “Removing Hydropower Dams Can Restore Ecosystems, Build Climate Resilience, and Restore Tribal Land”, Katie Schmidt, Resilience, November 11, 2024, originally published by The Observatory.

  • Soued, C., Harrison, J.A., Mercier-Blais, S. et al.Reservoir CO2 and CH4 emissions and their climate impact over the period 1900–2060. Nat. Geosci.15, 700–705 (2022). 

  • “Hundreds of new dams could mean trouble for our climate: Methane bubbles released from reservoirs add more to warming than once thought”, Warren Cornwall, article in Science Magazine, September 28, 2016.

  • “Carbon emissions from dams considerably underestimated so far”, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, May 12, 2021. 

  • Harrison, J. A.,  Prairie, Y. T.,  Mercier-Blais, S., &  Soued, C. (2021).  Year-2020 global distribution and pathways of reservoir methane and carbon dioxide emissions according to the greenhouse gas from reservoirs (G-res) model. Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

  • “Dam Accounting: Taking Stock of Methane Emissions From Reservoirs”, Tara Lohan, Revelator, Center for Biological Diversity, April 25, 2022

  • “Hundreds of Groups Reject Greenwashing of Destructive Hydropower Industry at COP26”, Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, November 9, 2021. 

Impact on Health

Connection of Watershed to Population Health

  • “The Effects of Altered Diet on the Health of the Karuk People”, Kari Marie Norgaard, Ph.D., 2005 Submitted to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission  Docket # P-2082; By same authors: Summary study in “Salmon Feeds Our People: Challenging Dams on the Klamath River”, Human Rights and Conservation. 

  • “Enhancing Tribal Health and Food Security In The Klamath Basin of Oregon and California By Building a Sustainable Regional Food System,” University of California Berkeley and USDA Research, Education & Economics Information System, 2017.

  • Sowerwine, J., Mucioki, M., Friedman, E., Hillman, L., and Sarna-Wojcicki, D. (2019). Food Security  Assessment of Native American Communities in the Klamath Basin with the Karuk Tribe, Klamath Tribes,  Yurok Tribe, and Hoopa Tribe. Karuk-UC Berkeley Collaborative. Berkeley, CA: University of California at  Berkeley.

  • “The Familial Bond Between the Klamath River and the Yurok People”, Brook Thompson, High Country News, August 24, 2021.

  •  “How removing 4 dams will return salmon to the Klamath River and the river to the people”,  Debra Utacia Krol, Arizona Republic, November 27, 2023

Impacts on Mental Health / Suicide & Addiction Epidemic

  • Kari Marie Norgaard & Ron Reed, Theory and Society (2017) 46:463–495 “Emotional impacts of environmental decline: What can Native cosmologies teach sociology about emotions and environmental justice?” 

  • Willette, Mirranda, Kari Marie Norgaard and Ron Reed (2016) “You Got to Have Fish: Families, Environmental Decline and Cultural Reproduction”, Families, Relationships and Societies 5(3): 375-392.

  • “How a remote California tribe set out to save its river and stop a suicide epidemic”, Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2017. 

  • “Sick River: Can These California Tribes Beat Heroin and History?” Jose Del Real, Los Angeles Times, Sept 4, 2018.

  • Yurok Tribe, Tribe Applauds Investment in Wellness Center, May 2022:

  • “The rural mental health crisis in drought-stricken Klamath Basin is coming for the entire West”, Climate Psychology Alliance, North America, 2022.

  • “Klamath Tribes Celebrate FERC Dam Removal Decision”, Press release, November 17, 2022

  •  “California’s Statewide Needs Assessment Addressing Opioid Crisis in American Indian Communities”, University of Southern California and CA Dept of Health Care Services, September 2019

  • Sowerwine J, Mucioki M, Sarna-Wojcicki D, et al. “Enhancing Indigenous Food Sovereignty and Community Health Through the Karuk Agroecosystem Resilience Initiative: We Are Caring for It: xúusnu’éethti. “Health Promotion Practice., Sage Journals, 2023.

Economy

  • “Benefits of Klamath Dam Removal:  Economic Benefits”, Klamath River Renewal Corporation. The impacts of dam removal have been studied extensively by the U.S. Department of the Interior. These studies have been vetted by the most rigorous review process available: three levels of peer review, culminating with the National Academy of Sciences. Impacts were further evaluated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process and California State Water Resources Control Board’s California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

  • “Economic Impacts of Dam Removals:  Klamath Case Study”, Isabelle Wilson, August 11, 2023 “From an economic standpoint, the Klamath dam removals are justifiable. The framework used in this study can be applied to future dam removal scenarios to prove justification.

  • “Benefits Flow As Historic Dam Removal Restores Klamath River”, American Society of Civil Engineers, February 13, 2025 

  • “Preliminary Economic Assessmentof Dam Removal: The Klamath River”, Sarah A. Kruse, Ph.D., Astrid J. Scholz, Ph.D., Ecotrust January 31, 2006