my bad, partially: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7046 > > In a study to be published in /Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies > for Global Change/, Fearnside estimates that in 1990 the greenhouse > effect of emissions from the Curuá-Una dam in Pará, Brazil, was more > than three-and-a-half times what would have been produced by > generating the same amount of electricity from oil. > > This is because large amounts of carbon tied up in trees and other > plants are released when the reservoir is initially flooded and the > plants rot. Then after this first pulse of decay, plant matter > settling on the reservoir's bottom decomposes without oxygen, > resulting in a build-up of dissolved methane. This is released into > the atmosphere when water passes through the dam's turbines. > I doubt in Nevada and Eastern Washington (my examples) there would have been comparable biomass, though.
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