Abstract:
The construction of fish passes has been a longstanding measure to improve
river ecosystem status by ensuring the passability of weirs, dams and other in-
channel structures for migratory fish. Many fish passes have a low biological
effectiveness because of unsuitable hydrodynamic conditions hindering fish to
rapidly detect the pass entrance. There has been a need for techniques to
quantify the hydrodynamics surrounding fish pass entrances in order to identify
those passes that require enhancement and to improve the design of new
passes. This PhD thesis presents the development of a methodology for the
rapid, spatially continuous quantification of near-pass hydrodynamics in the
field. The methodology involves moving-vessel Acoustic Doppler Current
Profiler (ADCP) measurements in order to quantify the 3-dimensional water
velocity distribution around fish pass entrances. The approach presented in this
thesis is novel because it integrates a set of techniques to make ADCP data
robust against errors associated with the environmental conditions near
engineered in-channel structures. These techniques provide solutions to
(i) ADCP compass errors from magnetic interference, (ii) bias in water velocity
data caused by spatial flow heterogeneity, (iii) the accurate ADCP positioning in
locales with constrained line of sight to navigation satellites, and (iv) the
accurate and cost-effective sensor deployment following pre-defined sampling
strategies. The effectiveness and transferability of the methodology were
evaluated at three fish pass sites covering conditions of low, medium and high
discharge. The methodology outputs enabled a detailed quantitative
characterisation of the fish pass attraction flow and its interaction with other
hydrodynamic features. The outputs are suitable to formulate novel indicators of
hydrodynamic fish pass attractiveness and they revealed the need to refine
traditional fish pass design guidelines.
