Abstract
AbstractMuch effort has been devoted to developing, constructing and refining fish passage facilities to enable target species to pass barriers on fluvial systems, and yet, fishway science, engineering and practice remain imperfect. In this review, 17 experts from different fish passage research fields (i.e., biology, ecology, physiology, ecohydraulics, engineering) and from different continents (i.e., North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia) identified knowledge gaps and provided a roadmap for research priorities and technical developments. Once dominated by an engineering‐focused approach, fishway science today involves a wide range of disciplines from fish behaviour to socioeconomics to complex modelling of passage prioritization options in river networks. River barrier impacts on fish migration and dispersal are currently better understood than historically, but basic ecological knowledge underpinning the need for effective fish passage in many regions of the world, including in biodiversity hotspots (e.g., equatorial Africa, South‐East Asia), remains largely unknown. Designing efficient fishways, with minimal passage delay and post‐passage impacts, requires adaptive management and continued innovation. While the use of fishways in river restoration demands a transition towards fish passage at the community scale, advances in selective fishways are also needed to manage invasive fish colonization. Because of the erroneous view in some literature and communities of practice that fish passage is largely a proven technology, improved international collaboration, information sharing, method standardization and multidisciplinary training are needed. Further development of regional expertise is needed in South America, Asia and Africa where hydropower dams are currently being planned and constructed.
Highlights
Most of the world’s rivers have been or are currently being dammed (Nilsson, Reidy, Dynesius, & Revenga, 2005; Zarfl, Lumsdon, Berlekamp, Tydecks, & Tockner, 2014)
We summarize the roles of different research fields contributing to fish passage research, evaluate what fundamental knowledge and tools are required to implement effective fish passage solutions, explore promising new approaches to better support natural fish movements in catchments impacted by humans and propose measures needed to facilitate information exchange and regional training in fish passage to minimize impacts on fisheries in the face of development
Materials and energy may flow across the landscape as organic and inorganic matter or packed as organisms. This is the case for Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp, Salmonidae), in which more than 95% of the body mass is accumulated from the marine environment and deposited in freshwater habitats during spawning and death, providing an important nutrient subsidy to freshwater environments (Gresh, Lichatowich, & Schoonmaker, 2000)
Summary
Most of the world’s rivers have been or are currently being dammed (Nilsson, Reidy, Dynesius, & Revenga, 2005; Zarfl, Lumsdon, Berlekamp, Tydecks, & Tockner, 2014). Castro-Santos et al (2009) proposed a suite of biological, structural and hydraulic covariates that should be reported for each site and laid out a conceptual framework based on movement theory that provides standardized metrics and objective measures of fish passage effectiveness while explicitly accounting for the complex behavioural and site-specific features that often confound efforts to measure performance To understand this complexity, and its appropriate solution, one must first recognize that passing a barrier (upstream or downstream) requires that fish approach, enter and pass the fishway (Figure 1 and Table 1). The percentage of individuals that are attracted to, enter and ascend a fishway are important for understanding the impacts of migration barriers and dam operations on individuals and populations
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