Construction of habitat suitability models (HSMs) for benthic macroinvertebrate and their applications to instream environmental flows: A case study in Xiangxi River of Three Gorges Reservior region, China

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Fengqing Li ; Qinghua Cai ; Xiaocheng Fu ; Jiankang Liu
• 关键词：Habitat suitability model ; Weighted usable area ; Instream environmental flow ; Benthic macroinvertebrate ; Xiangxi river ; Three Gorges reservoir
• 刊名：Progress in Natural Science
• 出版年：2009
• 出版时间：10 March 2009
• 年：2009
• 卷：19
• 期：3
• 页码：359-367
• 全文大小：318 K

文摘

Based on a long-term ecological monitoring, the present study chose the most dominant benthic macroinvertebrate (Baetis spp.) as target organisms in Xiangxi River, built the habitat suitability models (HSMs) for water depth, current velocity and substrate, respectively, which is the first aquatic organisms model for habitat suitability in the Chinese Mainland with a long-term consecutive in situ measurement. In order to protect the biointegrity and function of the river ecosystem, the theory system of instream environmental flow should be categorized into three hierarchies, namely minimum required instream flow (hydrological level), minimum instream environmental flow (bio-species level), and optimum instream environmental flow (ecosystem level). These three hierarchies of instream environmental flow models were then constructed with the hydrological and weighted usable area (WUA) method. The results show that the minimum required instream flow of Xiangxi River calculated by the Tennant method (10 % of the mean annual flow) was 0.615 m³ s⁻¹; the minimum instream environmental flow accounted for 19.22 % of the mean annual flow (namely 1.182 m³ s⁻¹), which was the damaged river channel flow in the dry season; and 42.91 % of the mean annual flow (namely 2.639 m³ s⁻¹) should be viewed as the optimum instream environmental flow in order to protect the health of the river ecosystem, maintain the instream biodiversity, and reduce the impact of small hydropower stations nearby the Xiangxi River. We recommend that the hydrological and biological methods can help establish better instream environmental flow models and design best management practices for use in the small hydropower station project.