US Hydropower & Environmental Mitigations: A 1998-2023 inventory of mitigation measures inside licensing documents

Ruggles, Thomas A.; Schmidt, Erik; Bhattacharyya, Arjun; Yoon, Hong-Jun; Khan, Ashar; Singh, Debjani

doi:10.21951/Mitigations_StoryMap/3001501

Title: US Hydropower & Environmental Mitigations: A 1998-2023 inventory of mitigation measures inside licensing documents

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Abstract

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) license documents mandate environmental mitigation requirements to reduce potential environmental damage caused by non-federal hydropower facilities. This StoryMap showcases a dataset that leveraged Natural Language Processing (NLP) to inventory environmental mitigations from 465 FERC licenses that were issued from 1998-2023 (Ruggles et al, 2025). Users can explore trends in mitigation requirements over time and space with interactive maps and are presented with a demonstration use case.

Authors:

;

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Publication Date:: Tue Nov 11 23:00:00 EST 2025

Other Number(s):: 1

DOE Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725

Research Org.:: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Water Power Technologies Office

OSTI Identifier:: 3001501

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.21951/Mitigations_StoryMap/3001501

Citation Formats


                    Ruggles, Thomas A., Schmidt, Erik, Bhattacharyya, Arjun, Yoon, Hong-Jun, Khan, Ashar, and Singh, Debjani. US Hydropower & Environmental Mitigations: A 1998-2023 inventory of mitigation measures inside licensing documents.  United States: N. p., 2025. 
        Web.  doi:10.21951/Mitigations_StoryMap/3001501.

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                    Ruggles, Thomas A., Schmidt, Erik, Bhattacharyya, Arjun, Yoon, Hong-Jun, Khan, Ashar, & Singh, Debjani. US Hydropower & Environmental Mitigations: A 1998-2023 inventory of mitigation measures inside licensing documents.  United States.  doi:https://doi.org/10.21951/Mitigations_StoryMap/3001501

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                    Ruggles, Thomas A., Schmidt, Erik, Bhattacharyya, Arjun, Yoon, Hong-Jun, Khan, Ashar, and Singh, Debjani. 2025.  
"US Hydropower & Environmental Mitigations: A 1998-2023 inventory of mitigation measures inside licensing documents".  United States.  doi:https://doi.org/10.21951/Mitigations_StoryMap/3001501.  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/3001501. Pub date:Tue Nov 11 23:00:00 EST 2025

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@article{osti_3001501,

  title        = {US Hydropower & Environmental Mitigations: A 1998-2023 inventory of mitigation measures inside licensing documents},

  author       = {Ruggles, Thomas A. and Schmidt, Erik and Bhattacharyya, Arjun and Yoon, Hong-Jun and Khan, Ashar and Singh, Debjani},

  abstractNote = {Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) license documents mandate environmental mitigation requirements to reduce potential environmental damage caused by non-federal hydropower facilities. This StoryMap showcases a dataset that leveraged Natural Language Processing (NLP) to inventory environmental mitigations from 465 FERC licenses that were issued from 1998-2023 (Ruggles et al, 2025). Users can explore trends in mitigation requirements over time and space with interactive maps and are presented with a demonstration use case.},

  doi          = {10.21951/Mitigations_StoryMap/3001501},

  journal      = {},

  number       = ,

  volume       = ,

  place        = {United States},

  year         = {Tue Nov 11 23:00:00 EST 2025},

  month        = {Tue Nov 11 23:00:00 EST 2025}

}

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.21951/Mitigations_StoryMap/3001501

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