water Article Examining Water Area Changes Accompanying Dam Construction in the Madeira River in the Brazilian Amazon Dengqiu Li 1,2, Dengsheng Lu 1,2,* , Emilio Moran 3 and Ramon Felipe Bicudo da Silva 4,5 1 State Key Laboratory for Subtropical Mountain Ecology of the Ministry of Science and Technology and Fujian Province, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China;
[email protected] 2 School of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China 3 Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA;
[email protected] 4 Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA;
[email protected] 5 Center for Environmental Studies and Research, State University of Campinas, Campinas 13083-867, Brazil * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 26 May 2020; Accepted: 2 July 2020; Published: 6 July 2020 Abstract: Two recently constructed run-of-the-river dams (Santo Antônio and Jirau), along the Madeira River in Brazil, have been controversial due to their large unquantified impacts on (1) land use and land cover (LULC) and (2) on the area that would be flooded. Based on annual LULC data from 1985 to 2017, this study integrated intensity analysis and difference components methods to analyze the impacts of the two dams on the annual flooded area in upstream, midstream, and downstream regions of the Madeira River. The dam construction significantly influenced LULC change intensity in the upstream and midstream regions since 2011 and 2010, respectively. An increase of 18.5% of the newly flooded area (462.58 km2) in the post-dam construction period was observed.