Emi Uchida Simone P. de Souza Ben Blachly Emma Fox Kevin Gardner Arthur J. Gold Jessica Jansujwicz Sharon Klein Bridie McGreavy Weiwei Mo Sean Smith Emily Vogler Karen Wilson Joseph D. Zydlewski David Hart Samuel G. Roy 2018 Aging infrastructure and growing interests in river restoration have led to a substantial rise in dam removals in the U.S. However, the decision to remove a dam involves many complex trade-offs. The benefits of dam removal for hazard reduction and ecological restoration are potentially offset by the loss of hydroelectricity production, water supply, and other important services. We use a multi-objective approach to examine a wide array of trade-offs and synergies involved with strategic dam removal at three spatial scales in New England. We find that increasing the scale of decision-making improves the efficiency of trade-offs among ecosystem services, river safety, and economic costs resulting from dam removal, but this may lead to heterogeneous and less equitable local-scale outcomes. Our model may help facilitate multilateral funding, policy, and stakeholder agreements by analyzing the trade-offs of coordinated dam decisions, including net benefit alternatives to dam removal, at scales that satisfy these agreements. application/pdf 10.1073/pnas.1807437115 en National Academy of Sciences A multiscale approach to balance trade-offs among dam infrastructure, river restoration, and cost article