Tectonics, geomorphology and water mill location in Scotland, and the potential impacts of mill dam failure

The technical requirements of water mill operation favour situations where water can be delivered to the top of, or at least part-way up, the mill wheel. Scotland's steeper rivers and its higher rainfalls mean that Scotland's mills require smaller mill dams, if they are needed at all. It would therefore be expected that catastrophic or managed failure of mill dam walls in northern Britain would release lower volumes of trapped sediment to the downstream fluvial system. These lower volumes would in turn result in lower geomorphological impacts downstream of the dam, both in terms of changing channel patterns and burial of the bed. Such dam failure is a key current issue in geomorphology and one case study of a small failed mill dam in western Scotland confirms the minimal downstream impacts of that failure.