Effects of artificial dams on hydrodynamic characteristics of fish habitats in upper reaches of Yangtze River

Habitat of fish species has been an essential component of riverine ecosystems in natural rivers. However, a series of ecological problems have posed a practical challenge on fish habitats and blocks migration routes, particularly in the upstream reach of the Yangtze River, mostly due to the construction of hydroelectric dams rapidly increased in recent years in China. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the hydrodynamic characteristics of fish habitats for the ecological management and restoration, especially for the rare and unique fish, and thereby to evaluate the habitat conditions of aquatic organisms in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. In this study, a three-dimensional model of flow field was established, corresponding to the artificial restoration of rare fish habitats in the river section of Yangtze River upstream, in Luzhou city, Sichuan province, China. The hydrodynamic characteristics of different flow velocities were investigated, based on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation combined with an experimental survey. The evolution and development of the turbulence/vortex structure were analyzed, in order to obtain the influence mechanisms of several artificial dams on the abdominal flow law of the basin, compared with the experimental data, including the site topography, flow mapping of the habitats, and the survey of fish shoal. The results showed that the large vortex areas were formed in the test area of the habitat basin, where the shape of vortex was almost invariant with the change of the stream speed. The upwelling occurred obviously in the anticlockwise vortex region, of which the velocity was slightly higher than that in the clockwise vortex region. The flow velocity of the habitat basin in the test area is lower than the control area, but the uniformity of water flow is baddish. The Froude number does not increase linearly with the inflow velocity, and the variation trends of flow uniformity index on different water depth sections of the habitat basin are similar. By the field survey of fish shoal in the same mapping distance, the area outside the dam was 0.714 in 1 000 scanning times, while, the area inside the dam was 3.157 in 1 000 scanning times, revealing that the low-velocity turbulence/vortex structure in the test area of the habitat basin can gather fish better, and thereby the artificial restoration of fish habitat can provide suitable living conditions for aquatic organisms to roost, breed, and shelter. Specifically, the average flow velocity of two test routes in the abdomen of the basin was 0.53 and 0.79 m/s, when the flow velocity was 2 m/s. The difference between the numerical simulation results and the test data is about 10% on the same mapping path, which verify the reliability of the numerical calculation method. The findings can offer a sound theoretical reference for the hydrodynamics of large-water fishery ecological projects.