Determining environmental flows and river restoration actions using ecohydraulic models and macroinvertebrates.

The need to incorporate macroinvertebrates as bioindicators of ecosystem health has long been highlighted, but specific limitations often inhibited such efforts. We highlight the recent advances in environmental/computational hydraulics and in macroinvertebrates-based ecological research by synthesizing information from our previous works. We point out that macroinvertebrates-based ecohydraulic modelling has reached levels of speed and accuracy that can provide water managers with a robust, stand-alone ecohydraulic modelling tool to help them balance water allocation and sustainably manage freshwater resources. We demonstrate that hydrodynamic models and benthic macroinvertebrate habitat-modelling algorithms have advanced to very high levels; subsequently, they have already been used to accurately determine ecosystem-based environmental flows downstream of dams and to ecologically pre-optimize river restoration actions prior to field implementation.     «

The need to incorporate macroinvertebrates as bioindicators of ecosystem health has long been highlighted, but specific limitations often inhibited such efforts. We highlight the recent advances in environmental/computational hydraulics and in macroinvertebrates-based ecological research by synthesizing information from our previous works. We point out that macroinvertebrates-based ecohydraulic modelling has reached levels of speed and accuracy that can provide water managers with a robust, stan...     »