how very unsurprising. you mess with large reorientation of geographic features at your peril, see my old column on the scientific reason to leave the rama sethu alone, which is along the same lines. we just don't know what we're doing when we do giant geo/hydro projects, which amount to terraforming in scale. http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/sep/17rajeev.htm
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From: Girish
From: Girish
As Chinese officials continue to grapple with the devastating earthquake that has killed tens of thousands of people, they have also been seeking to to reassure the world that the nearby behemoth Three Gorges Dam is safe.
Critics of the dam have long painted a bleak picture of mass death and destruction in the Yangtze River region should the dam fail. They say its placement in an earthquake-prone area is one of its most dangerous attributes.
Now, there is speculation that the world's largest and perhaps most controversial dam was a factor in causing the killer Sichuan province quake. Scientists from around the world have long theorized that the sheer weight of the reservoir created by the dam could cause seismic shifts in the area. A recent article in Scientific American explained the issue and said 19 earthquakes in China over the past 50 years could be blamed on dams.
Though no one has directly fingered Three Gorges as the reason for the earthquake, Probe International, a Canadian non-profit that monitors China's dams and their environmental and humanitarian fallout, raises the possibility.
"Whether reservoir-induced seismicity is behind last week's earthquake should be urgently investigated before the Three Gorges reservoir is filled to its maximum height," said Patricia Adams, the group's executive director.
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