Integrated Hydraulic Modelling, Water Quality Modelling and Habitat Assessment for Sustainable Water Management: A Case Study of the Anyang-Cheon Stream, Korea

Byungwoong Choi,Seung Se Choi

doi:10.3390/su13084330

Abstract

Recent ecological stream restoration projects have focused on expanding the water-friendly space of streams, promoting the health of aquatic ecosystems, and restoring various habitats, which raise the need for relevant research. Applying integrated environmental analysis, this study quantifies the change in hydraulic characteristics before and after the restoration projects through physical habitat simulation and links the results of physical impacts to estimate benefits of increase in water quality and aquatic ecosystem health due to the implementation of the project. For this, the study area is a 3.3 km long reach of the Anyang-cheon Stream, Korea. Field monitoring revealed that five fish species are dominant and sub-dominant, and account for 76% of the total fish community. To assess the change of before and after ecological stream restoration project, the River2D and Coastal Modelling System (CMS)-Flow 2D models were used for hydraulic and water quality simulations, respectively. For the habitat simulation, the HSI (Habitat Suitability Index) model was used. In addition, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment Water Quality Index (CCME WQI) was used to calculate changes in water quality index and to examine changes in habitat areas with an integrated quantitative index, the methodology of Zingraff-Hamed et al. was adopted. It was found that the ecological stream restoration project significantly increased for the eco-friendly area. In addition, the changes in water quality and habitat suitability grades before the ecological river restoration project were improved to two stages and one stage, respectively. This study applied the integrated analytical framework as a policy/project assessment tool and the results of this study will be useful for the integrated water management policy.

Highlights

Streams have provided important space for human life from the past to the present, and are resources that have important environmental, ecological, and cultural values
The results indicate that the change of the flow characteristics affects both the water quality of the stream and the habitat of the living aquatic species
This study conducted physical habitat simulations to investigate the impact of water quality and habitat before and after ecological river restoration project

Summary

Introduction

Streams have provided important space for human life from the past to the present, and are resources that have important environmental, ecological, and cultural values. The rivers are mostly made up of water and soil, providing a special ecological habitat space for aquatic species. In Korea, since the 1960s, the basic river management project has been performed for industrialization, and the channel-straightening and river maintenance of artificial levees has occurred. This resulted in the maximization of the water use and flood control, the various changes in the aquatic ecosystem led to the decrease of biodiversity, aquatic ecosystem health, and suitable habitat area [1,2,3,4]. Through the ecological stream restoration project, the habitat space and spawning space of aquatic species were

Methods

Results

Conclusion