Environmental considerations and remedial measures in Norwegian hydropower schemes

There have been increasing efforts in Norway to incorporate environmental considerations into the planning process and to develop and test new ways of reducing the effects of future hydropower development, while at the same time rehabilitating the environment in and around existing regulation schemes. The aim is to develop measures which maintain biological diversity or encourage changes which reduce the deleterious effects of hydropower on the environment. Landscape and biological considerations are an important aspect of such remedial measures. The most useful measures that have been developed and tested are weirs, substrate improvement and landscaping.