Two giant dams starved the Danube Delta of sediment for decades

The Danube does not arrive at the Black Sea as it once did. For thousands of years, the river carried enormous quantities of sediment towards its delta, steadily building and reshaping the low-lying landscape where river channels meet lagoons and the sea. That process changed after large-scale engineering works altered the river upstream. Following the construction of the Iron Gates dams, the amount of sediment reaching the lower Danube fell sharply. By the following decades, the delta was no longer receiving enough material to maintain the balance that had helped shape it for millennia. Along parts of the Black Sea coast, erosion began to take a greater role.How the Danube built its delta over 12,000 yearsThe Danube Delta is the product of a very long relationship between flowing water, sediment and the Black Sea. According to the research published in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, titled ‘Danube River Sediment Input and its Interaction with the North-western Black Sea’, over roughly 12,000 years, material carried downstream accumulated around the river's mouth, allowing the delta to extend and change as channels shifted and new deposits formed.That process depended on a c...