New Paper on "Beaver Versus Human: The Big Differences in Small Dams" just published in WiRES Water!

Ellen Wohl and Shreeram Inamdar just published a really interesting perspective piece and reivew on the difference between natural beaver dams, beaver dam meadows, man made dams and beaver dam analogues. They lay out some helpful conceptual distincitions between different structural elements with the label of "dam" tied to them.

It is worth noting that BDAs without mainteance (by humans) or as intended to be used and taken over by beaver (i.e. the process of beaver dam activity), are often expanded and indistinguishable from real beaver dams and beaver complexes (or meadows). Many practitioners and researchers contintue to confuse the purpose of BDAs as an "alternative" to beaver dam activity. When this "alternative" is the intention or the outcome, BDAs behave much more like abandon, unmaintained beaver dams or breached dams or even channel-spanning debris jams. 

The article is Open Access: