scholarly journals Quantifying the Impact of Water Abstraction for Low Head ‘Run of the River’ Hydropower on Localized River Channel Hydraulics and Benthic Macroinvertebrates

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Anderson ◽  
H. Moggridge ◽  
J. D. Shucksmith ◽  
P. H. Warren
Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 433
Author(s):  
Laima Česonienė ◽  
Midona Dapkienė ◽  
Petras Punys

Hydropower plants produce renewable and sustainable energy but affect the river’s physico-chemical characteristics and change the abundance and composition of the aquatic organisms. The impact of large HPPs on the ecological conditions of surface water bodies have been extensively studied, but less attention has been paid to environmental impact studies of small hydropower plants (SHPs). The impact of hydropeaking on both the river flow regime and ecosystems has been well-studied for peaking mode plants, mainly medium to large-sized ones. However, for small hydroelectric power plants, and especially for those in lowland rivers, the available information on water quality, benthic macroinvertebrates communities and fish abundance, and biomass is not sufficient. Ten small hydropower plants were selected, and the ecological status of water bodies was assessed in different parts of Lithuania. The studies were performed at the riverbed upstream from the SHPs, where the hydrological regime has not changed, and downstream from the SHPs. It was found that the small hydropower plants do not affect the physico-chemical values of the water quality indicators. This study demonstrated that the total number of benthic macroinvertebrates taxa (TS) is influenced by the concentration of nitrogen and suspended solids, the water flow, the river area, and the current speed; the number of EPT (Ephemeroptera (mayflies), Plecoptera (stoneflies), and Trichoptera (caddisflies)) taxa is influenced by the concentration of nitrogen and suspended solids. The studied indicators do not have a significant impact on biomass. The SHPs affect the fish abundance and biomass. The Lithuanian fish index (LFI) is influenced by the average depth and area of the river. Some SHPs operating in lowland areas may yield somewhat significant hydrograph ramping but more detailed investigation is needed to support the significance of this impact on the biological indices.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha Flaig ◽  
Timothy Praditia ◽  
Alexander Kissinger ◽  
Ulrich Lang ◽  
Sergey Oladyshkin ◽  
...  

<p>In order to prevent possible negative impacts of water abstraction in an ecologically sensitive moor south of Munich (Germany), a “predictive control” scheme is in place. We design an artificial neural network (ANN) to provide predictions of moor water levels and to separate hydrological from anthropogenic effects. As the moor is a dynamic system, we adopt the „Long short-term memory“ architecture.</p><p>To find the best LSTM setup, we train, test and compare LSTMs with two different structures: (1) the non-recurrent one-to-one structure, where the series of inputs are accumulated and fed into the LSTM; and (2) the recurrent many-to-many structure, where inputs gradually enter the LSTM (including LSTM forecasts from previous forecast time steps). The outputs of our LSTMs then feed into a readout layer that converts the hidden states into water level predictions. We hypothesize that the recurrent structure is the better structure because it better resembles the typical structure of differential equations for dynamic systems, as they would usually be used for hydro(geo)logical systems. We evaluate the comparison with the mean squared error as test metric, and conclude that the recurrent many-to-many LSTM performs better for the analyzed complex situations. It also produces plausible predictions with reasonable accuracy for seven days prediction horizon.</p><p>Furthermore, we analyze the impact of preprocessing meteorological data to evapotranspiration data using typical ETA models. Inserting knowledge into the LSTM in the form of ETA models (rather than implicitly having the LSTM learn the ETA relations) leads to superior prediction results. This finding aligns well with current ideas on physically-inspired machine learning.</p><p>As an additional validation step, we investigate whether our ANN is able to correctly identify both anthropogenic and natural influences and their interaction. To this end, we investigate two comparable pumping events under different meteorological conditions. Results indicate that all individual and combined influences of input parameters on water levels can be represented well. The neural networks recognize correctly that the predominant precipitation and lower evapotranspiration during one pumping event leads to a lower decrease of the hydrograph.</p><p>To further demonstrate the capability of the trained neural network, scenarios of pumping events are created and simulated.</p><p>In conclusion, we show that more robust and accurate predictions of moor water levels can be obtained if available physical knowledge of the modeled system is used to design and train the neural network. The artificial neural network can be a useful instrument to assess the impact of water abstraction by quantifying the anthropogenic influence.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanda Iepure ◽  
Nicolas Gouin ◽  
Angeline Bertin ◽  
Ana Camacho ◽  
Antonio González-Ramón ◽  
...  

Chile has large extensions of arid and semi-arid regions throughout the whole country, where the intensive demands and use of water resources, especially groundwater for irrigations and mining activities, increased dramatically over the last decades. The aquifer depletions due to water abstraction for irrigation and nutrient loads, exert major alterations of water quality, groundwater recharge and the natural renewal rate. All these factors diminish the aquifer value for the users and contribute to the degradation of groundwater as environment and habitat for fauna. This intensive use of groundwater resources in Chile brought to significant social and economic benefits, but their inadequate management resulted in negative environmental, legal and socioeconomic consequences. In this study, we aimed at providing a first assessment of environmental alterations of groundwater ecosystems from agricultural watersheds in northern Chile by specifically evaluating the effects of nitrogen and pesticide loads on groundwater communities and identifing the ecosystem service alterations due to agricultural activities. The study has been performed in a glacial aquifer from Coquimbo region; 250 km north of Santiago de Chile, the floodplain of which is dominated by agriculture (fruits tress, vineyards). Due to low regional precipitations (100-240 mm/year) the aquifer is primarily recharged by snowmelt from the Andean chain and surface runoff. The relative groundwater levels, groundwater temperature, chemical analysis of nitrogen and total phosphorus and pesticide concentrations were examined, along with the evaluation of crustacean biodiversity and spatial distribution pattern. Stygofauna taxonomic richness and the presence of stygobites have been related more to groundwater level stability than to chemical water parameters indicating that over-exploitation has a negative impact on habitat suitability for groundwater invertebrates. Groundwater biota assessment is essential in understanding the impact produced by agriculture activities on groundwater as a resource and as ecosystem, a nexus that becomes more and more widely recognized. The rationale and the preliminary results of this study are summarized in the Suppl. material 1.


Author(s):  
Jinbo Chen ◽  
Abraham Engeda

As a major resource for electricity, hydropower is widely used around the world for renewable energy. Traditionally, large high-capital cost dam equipped with large turbine system is preferred to produce sufficient power supply. However, recently large hydropower system is questioned because of the impact of dams on the local environment, which could be a major barrier for development of large hydropower system. Besides, billions people remain without access to electricity and most of them are in remote and rural location where is not suitable for large hydropower system. Therefore, the utilization of ultra-low-head (ULH) water energy (situations where the hydraulic head is less than 3m or the water flow rate is more than 0.5m/s with zero head) has becomes more attractive. Part I of this paper focus on developing a design methodology for a low-impact, damless Kaplan turbine system for ULH water resource.


1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 656-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan P. Benstead ◽  
James G. March ◽  
Catherine M. Pringle ◽  
Frederick N. Scatena

2024 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Baaloudj ◽  
P. R. De los Ríos-Escalante ◽  
C. Esse

Abstract The Seybouse is the second largest river basin in Algeria, hosting an important biodiversity and providing various ecosystem services. This watershed is highly influenced by agricultural and industrial activities, which threaten its biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. The use of benthic macroinvertebrates as biological indicators has a long tradition in developed countries and integrated into all assessments of the ecological quality of river systems. However, the macroinvertebrates of many North African regions are still not well studied, including those of the Seybouse river. The aim of this study is to assess the inventory and ecological role of benthic macroinvertebrates in inland waters of the Seybouse River and determine the impact of pollution on their spatial distributions. We sampled the benthic macrofauna of Wadi Seybouse and its affluents using regular surveys in three sites, of which one was in the upper Seybouse Bouhamdane in Medjez Amar and two in the middle Seybouse. Between December 2019 and May 2020, 10 physico-chemical parameters (pH, EC, OD, water speed, NO3, Salinity, NO2, MES, turbidity, depth) were measured in order to establish a health state diagnosis of these aquatic ecosystems. The complementary biological approach by the analysis of populations of macroinvertebrates identified 7482 individuals and 40 taxa divided into five classes: Crustaceans which were the most dominant, insects with the main orders (Ephemeroptera, Diptera, Trichoptera, Heteroptera and Odonata), Molluscs, Nematodes and Annelids. The physico-chemical analyzes and the application of the organic pollution indices indicated a strong to excessive pollution for all sites, especially in Seybouse upstream


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