Bank line retreat between 1984 and 2016 at Itaipu reservoir, Paraguay-Brazil border

The Itaipu reservoir was created in 1984 on the Parana River, in the Paraguay-Brazil border. The reservoir is 181 km long, 7 km mean width, its capacity exceeds 29.109 m3 and the bank line has over 2,919 km. The objective of the present work is to estimate the magnitude of the shoreline recession rates in Brazilian shorelines of Itaipu reservoir since its formation (1984) to 2016, through cartographic sources (1984-1992), direct field measurement adopting erosion pins technique (1993-1995) and comparison of satellite images available on Google Earth (2002-2016). The combination of indirect and direct techniques adopted to measure the bank erosion in the Itaipu reservoir provided bank line retreat between 1984 and 2016. The erosion measured during the first eight years after closure of dam, show that 54 to 75% of the total recession has occurred in this period. This data provides a rate of decline of bank erosion at Itaipu reservoir over time.