Citation
Ruggles, T.A., E.H. Schmidt, A. Bhattacharyya, H.J. Yoon, A. Khan, and D. Singh. 2025. US Hydropower & Environmental Mitigations: A 1998-2023 inventory of mitigation measures inside licensing documents. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.21951/Mitigations_StoryMap/3001501
Overview
This StoryMap explores trends in environmental mitigation measures for FERC licensed hydropower projects in the US and how they relate to aquatic endangered species critical habitats. FERC license documents contain a wealth of information buried inside extensive documents. The StoryMap describes how researchers leverage natural language processing (NLP) models, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), to extract information from these documents.
Science Themes
Related Records
Comprehensive Database of Environmental Mitigations Extracted from FERC-Licensed Hydropower Projects using Artificial Intelligence Techniques, 1998-2025
This dataset provides a comprehensive inventory of environmental mitigation measures required by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensed hydropower facilities from 461 licenses that were issued between 1998 to 2023.
View DatasetUS Hydropower Mitigation Database
This dataset provides a database of mitigation included in the FERC licenses of non-federal hydropower facilities.
View DatasetA Decision Support System to Compile Environmental Mitigations from Hydropower Licensing Documents
H. -J. Yoon, T. Ruggles, H. Zhao and D. Singh, “A Decision Support System to Compile Environmental Mitigations from Hydropower Licensing Documents,” 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), Washington, DC, USA, 2024, pp. 4265-4268, doi: 10.1109/BigData62323.2024.10825065.
View PublicationEnvironmental Mitigation Co-occurrences by HUC02 Region
This interactive visualization shows the spatial and temporal trends of environmental mitigations present in Ruggles et al (2025), which contains a comprehensive inventory of mitigations required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensed hydropower facilities from 461 licenses that were issued from 1998 to 2023. The visualization features a map of HUC02 regions with donut charts showing the breakdown of mitigations by category, and once selected, a more detailed breakdown of subcategories for a given region. It also allows users to explore the co-occurrence of mitigations to help answer questions about the frequency with which any two mitigation measures have been undertaken together.
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