Atatürk Dam

 dam, hydroelectric power station/plant

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the Atatürk Dam (Turkish: Atatürk Barajı), originally the Karababa Dam, is a zoned rock-fill dam with a central core[1] on the Euphrates River on the border of Adıyaman Province and Şanlıurfa Province in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Built both to generate electricity and to irrigate the plains in the region, it was renamed in honour of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938), the founder of the Turkish Republic. The construction began in 1983 and was completed in 1990. The dam and the hydroelectric power plant, which went into service after the upfilling of the reservoir was completed in 1992, are operated by the State Hydraulic Works (DSİ). The reservoir created behind the dam, called Lake Atatürk Dam (Turkish: Atatürk Baraj Gölü), is the third largest in Turkey.
The dam is situated 23 km (14 mi) northwest of Bozova, Şanlıurfa Province, on state road D.875 from Bozova to Adıyaman. Centerpiece of the 22 dams on the Euphrates and the Tigris, which comprise the integrated, multi-sector, Southeastern Anatolia Project (Turkish: Güney Doğu Anadolu Projesi, known as GAP), it is one of the world's largest dams. The Atatürk Dam, one of the five operational dams on the Euphrates as of 2008, is preceded by Keban and Karakaya dams upstream and followed by Birecik and the Karkamış dams downstream. Two more dams on the river are under construction.
The dam embankment is 169 m (554 ft) high and 1,820 m (5,970 ft) long. The hydroelectric power plant (HEPP) has a total installed power capacity of 2,400 MW and generates 8,900 GW·h electricity annually.[2] The total cost of the dam project was about US$1.25 billion.[3]
The dam was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish one million lira banknotes of 1995–2005[4] and of the 1 new lira banknote of 2005–2009.[5]
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Turkey’s Ataturk Dam was completed in 1990. It is the largest of a series of dams along the two major rivers of the region, the Tigris and Euphrates, which both have their headwaters in southeastern Turkey. Built both to generate electricity for the region and to irrigate the plains between the Euphrates (on which it sits) and the Tigris (to the east), Ataturk Dam is the centerpiece of a huge public works program within Turkey known as the Southeastern Anatolia Project. When the entire program of reservoirs, power generation stations, and irrigation channels is constructed, it will irrigate some 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres). The reservoir already provides 8.9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, roughly 22 percent of Turkey’s anticipated electrical needs in 2010, when the project is expected to be completed. With the dam now finished, as well as the first of the irrigation channels, crops such as cotton are being grown in the Harran Plains in the dry season, where previous irrigation was limited to borewater and much less land was in active production.
In this pair of Landsat images, the dramatic growth of the Ataturk Dam Lake in the space of 19 years is quite apparent. The newly formed lake, sometimes referred to as a sea by locals, covers some 817 square kilometer (320 square miles) in total surface area.
These images were acquired by the Landsat 4 Multispectral Sensor (MSS) and the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instruments. The first image was acquired by MSS on August 20, 1983, and the second by ETM+ on August 24, 2002. Both false-color composite images were constructed by combining near-infrared, red, and green wavelengths (MSS bands 3, 2, and 1; ETM+ bands 4, 3, and 2).