You may have heard the concern about damaged dams in Sichuan province after the recent strong earthquake there. CNN reports that Chinese authorities say almost 400 dams have been damaged. One in particular, the Zipingpu Dam near Dujiangyan City, has severe cracks, but the water level there has now been lowered to safe levels (according to authorities).

Dr. Mark Mulligan, of the Environmental Monitoring and Modelling Research Group at King’s College London, writes in:

In the light of the concern over dams in the Earthquake affected area in China we have released the (unvalidated) recently collected dams locations for the area around the quake. These points were digitised by Leonardo Saenz Cruiz using the dams geowiki. The KMZ link is accessible from this page. Nothing fancy, just the point locations of the dams.

You too can contribute to the geowiki of dams via the above page. In case you’re wondering, the Zipingpu Dam is here and the earthquake epicenter is here.

[Update 16.53 UTC: The Wall Street Journal’s China Journal has some interesting context about the dams.]