Importance of Dams

Dams are engineering works that consist of blocking a passage of water in order to generate a reservoir that will later serve to promote different productive activities or avoid inconveniences for the same water effect. The dams therefore imply a great investment, an investment that is only justified by its potential benefits. On the other hand, a work of these characteristics It usually has a notable environmental impact, an impact that must be properly studied in the projection of the work. There are a large number of dams in the world that allow the use of water oriented towards irrigation, electricity generation or mere planning before floods; They may have different shapes depending on the conditions of the place, but in any case an attempt is made to generate the aforementioned reservoir after fencing off the natural course of a river.

Dam utility

The use of a dam is oriented above all to facilitate human activities. A clear example of this situation can be offered by the case of dams that try to control the flow of a river to prevent flooding.

; In this case, the dam functions as a kind of regulator of the water that can be allowed to pass, preventing a period of heavy rainfall there is an uncontrolled flooding of the river and floods that affect populations or roads.

As a generator of electrical energy

Another type of use more than frequent for the use of a dam is that of the generation of electrical energy. In this case, the water is accumulated in the reservoir and then allowed to pass through small spaces, causing the existing pressure to move large turbines. Thus, from the generation of mechanical energy electrical energy is then produced that will be used to serve the population.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the case of dams whose purpose is to divert the course of water in order to irrigate different areas that have a lack of water distributed in a natural. In this type of case, the main purpose of dams is to encourage different agricultural activities.

In nature

As we can see, dams play a very important role when planning different human activities. However, it is interesting to verify that there are animals that usually build this type of structure to create an environment conducive to their development. The most conspicuous case is that of beavers, which obstruct the passage of a river course with branches or pieces of trees that they themselves collect and cut.