Soft engineering vs Hard engineering Essay Example

could be as there is less water in the river channel, the rivers discharge is reduced. Similarly land use change in upper catchments areas such as contour plugging, increase the rivers lag time by the spreading fatter over a larger area. Soft engineering are also thought to be more attractive than hard engineering schemes, attracting tourists and homemakers to the area.

Man-made structures known as hard engineering strategies, although successful at reducing flooding, generally bring more destructive social and economic disadvantages in comparison to its advantages. Firstly, man-made structures such as dams, although attractive to tourists, are expensive to build and maintain, they also require a certain level of technical skill to build, thus are an unsuccessful for LED countries. Despite creating reservoirs for people to use for recreational activities such as sailing, the dams displace this water elsewhere down the river as land is flooded when a reservoir is created.

The land chosen to be destroyed is usually farmland or recreational areas. Through construction of the three gorges dam on the Yawning River has caused between 1. 3 and 2 million people to relocate as 13 cities and 1 352 village to be submerged. Additionally, 657 factories and 1 300 sites of cultural and historical interest. Sediment is trapped by the dam, reducing the protective use of this sediment being deposited; it can also cause the dam to fail, meaning more economic costs for the local residents.

Environmentally, methods such as channel straightening alter river channel shape and can sister wildlife habitats; the Siberian crane of China is now endangered and spends the winter in wetlands below the dam. To conclude, I believe soft

engineering strategies bring greater social and economic benefits to surrounding communities, especially those in LED countries where the skill and finance is not available to construct man-made structures such as dams or levees. Hard engineering strategies are effective in creating HOPE power and recreational areas of reservoir areas but in the long term these create larger social problems for local people.