As the world is moving away from non-renewable energy sources, hundreds of hydropower dams have been proposed as an alternative in the ecologically sensitive and largely untapped resource of the Amazon basin. However, hydropower is not completely green, as about 10% of dams emit just as much greenhouse gas (GHG) per unit energy as traditional fossil fuel plants, and some existing dams in the Amazon basin emit 10 times more than traditional energy plants (Almeida et al., 2019). To optimize hydropower dam placements and ensure they will be a clean source of energy, in 2019 a Cornell-lead team of ecologists and computer scientists worked with researchers in South America to develop an artificial intelligence computational model to find the best possible geographical locations amongst 350 possible dam sites. The AI model considers the ecology of the entire Amazon basin to protect biodiversity while generating the combination of dam sites producing the least amount of greenhouse gas per energy unit. This is crucial to maintain biodiversity and protect the region fondly nicknamed “Earth’s Lungs”. Interesting results have revolved around dam construction at higher elevations because less land needs to be flooded to generate the same unit of energy. Whether dams are environmentally friendly or not is still a hot debate, but this new AI computation model could be key to reducing carbon emissions from dam networks in the tropics.
Almeida, R. M., Shi, Q., Gomes-Selman, J. M., Wu, X., Xue, Y., Angarita, H., … Flecker, A. S. (2019). Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning. Nature Communications, 10(1). http://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12179-5
See also:
Lefkowitz, M. (2019, September 19). AI helps shrink Amazon dams’ greenhouse gas emissions. Retrieved from https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/09/ai-helps-shrink-amazon-dams-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Categories
Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change, Internet of Things, Pollution
Air Pollution Robot
The dangers of air pollution to human health are well documented, though the traditional methodology of collecting and reporting on sample lags behind the need to keep abreast and regulate air pollution in a meaningful amount of time. The use of drones and robots have been identified by researchers as resources that can be tweaked […]
Artificial Life, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Industry/Natural Commodities, Lifestyle, Monitoring
Telematic Rivers
Erica Kermani’s artwork seeks to answer a central question: if rivers were seeing an equal, living entity, would humans take issues like climate change threatening them more seriously? In his year-long art exhibition in 2017, Kermani, in collaboration with Diana Salcedo & Jeana Chesnik, created a new forum of interaction between humans and rivers to […]
Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Lifestyle, Monitoring, Pollution, Visual Technologies
Co-occupied Boundaries
Art is easily found in nature but rarely is what considered art today inherently natural. The concept of co-occupied mediums that serve to be both functional for nature and aesthetically pleasing to people is being actively explored by Asya Ilgun and Phil Ayres, from the CITAstudio at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In […]
Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Lifestyle, Monitoring, Pollution, Visual Technologies