A beaver dam in British Columbia showing its ability to hold back sediment pollution during heavy rainfall
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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Dam, that’s interesting
BEHOLD: THE AWESOME POWER OF THE BEAVER
Sucks to be a fish on the wrong side of the dam hehe
Interesting. Looks like an old oxbow lake to the southeast of the river. And while that may just be more shallow, it looks like it has also had some of the silty runoff from the dammed portion.
That’s one mighty beaver.
I wonder if it was an older beaver dam that caused an earlier redirection of the stream creating the little “oxbow“ puddle at the very bottom of the image.
Leave it to beavers!
Since when is sediment ‘pollution”. That’s just part of the ecosystem.
Beavers, clams and oysters. Nature’s water management team
Which part is the “cleaner/filtered” side? The pudding brown or soot black?
Important to note that Beaver dams don’t “filter” anything, except fairly large debris. The downstream water clarity is a result of the dam slowing the water down upstream, allowing heavier sediment to settle out of suspension. Slow water doesn’t have the energy required to mobilize and move heavier sediments, so the slower the water, the more settling that occurs. Over time you’ll end up with a thick accumulation of soft mud and sludge upstream of the dam, while downstream will typically have larger substrate that is kept clear by the flowing water.
Sometimes the dams fail and send a huge flood of water and mud downstream, potentially blowing out more dams downstream.
If you ever see a wall of straw bales in a drainage ditch, they are there to accomplish the exact same thing. Not filter, but slow down water allowing sediment to settle.
Source: am ecologist
Which one is the polluted water?
Bóbr Kurwa
Ja pierdolę
The land to the bottom of the pic would have been dry if the dam wasnt there? Thats where they feed.
Well you can see how it’s already piled on and diverted the water to the south there. But this is a meandering river, those are its old floodplains. It’s going to move around inevitably
Eventually, that sediment will build up, and that river will be so shallow the water will need to find a way around or over the dam. This doesn’t make the silt stop. It just changes when it flows and how much. Most likely 10 years of silt is going downstream all at once.
This is actually becoming a problem for artificial hydroelectric dams that are many decades old. Their reservoirs fill up with silt, and they lose head pressure (pressure = power) and undergo higher stress than if it was just water.
Sediment can carry shitloads of nutrients downstream. It’s typically only “pollution” when the sediment itself is human contaminated.
Or, and hear me out, the river flows the other way and the never had some bad street food the night before.
Such a cool example of how complex behaviours can be hard-coded into DNA. When they hear running water, beavers instinctively pile sticks and debris around the sound.
That Beaver is keeping all the Chocolate Rain for themselves!
It’s just mud, it’s not pollution.
So beaver dams can act as a natural filter (in a way) for rivers? That is pretty cool.
The Guinness River. 😋
Beaver porn.
What do beavers need all this sediment for?
Bobr! Excellent!
Excuse me, uh, is this a god dam?
I couldn’t imagine that beaver dams could be like filters for a river.
A beaver!?? Daaaaaaam!!!
Well, beaver dam it.
Well, dam
Hold back or hold in, I suppose?
woq
10,000 years of beaver dams in the Midwest and Rockies created the giant underground Oglala reservoir. Yet in just 50 years we’ve depleted more than 50% of it. SMH.
🦫 🙅🏼♂️ 🚿