The 7th International Symposium on Ecohydraulics
Ecohydraulics is the science which connects physical processes in aquatic and semiaquatic ecosystems with biological functions. Ecohydraulics, the combination of ecology and hydraulics, is a truly interdisciplinary science which involves for example hydrology, hydraulics and geomorphic fluvial processes on the physical side, and information on ecological response on the biological side. This type of information includes individuals’, species’ or communities’ life cycle strategies, population dynamics, feeding and reproduction strategies and many others. Chemical and physiological processes can be involved as well. Fish and benthic fauna and aquatic and riparian vegetation are most commonly investigated. The three major scopes of activities are
- field data collection and field experiments,
- laboratory experiments in hydraulic flumes, and
- numerical simulations and modeling of aquatic ecosystem processes.
Issues that are being investigated by Ecohydraulics scientists include for example the design of fishways, the analysis of instream flow regulations below dams, or complex river restoration scenarios where decisions are made based on numerical modeling results. In general, Ecohydraulics attempts to understand why aquatic biota or ecosystems behave in a certain way, based on the physical processes that occurr in the system.
The science of Ecohydraulics is equally shared between hydrologists and hydraulic engineers on one side and all disciplines of natural science on the other side. When it comes to numerical model development, applied mathematicians and computer scientists are involved as well. With remote data collection getting more common and affordable and new sensors being developed, more disciplines have developed linkages into the Ecohydraulics field.
The Ecohydraulics conference series started in Trondheim, Norway, in 1994 and has since then been organized on a biannual basis in Europe, North America, South Afrika and New Zealand. The organization committee for this conference series is a joint committee between the Ecohydraulics section of the International Association for Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR) and the International Aquatic Modeling Group (IAMG), an independent interdisciplinary group of aquatic scientists. Both, the IAHR Ecohydraulics section and IAMG, were founded in 1995 following an urgent need for interdisciplinary research in this field.
While the focus in earlier years was clearly on the development of instream flow regulations and fish migration in general there is now a very complex range of activities which involve increasingly complex data collection and modeling tools. The numerical modeling tools in most cases have several components, one for the physical processes, and another one that provides the interface between the biological functions and the physical processes and attempts to simulate certain ecosystem functions. The models for the physical processes are usually deterministic models, the same ones that are used by hydrologists and engineers to investigate purely hydrodynamic phenomena. The models for the biological functions can be of any kind, they are the core of Ecohydraulics research. Since many of these processes depend on strong spatial and temporal dynamics the modeling becomes more and more complex. This is where the linkage to Hydroinformatics and the joint research interests between the two IAHR sections lie.
