Aim of the study The purpose of the article is to present the effects of work on developing a method for determining environmental channel flows that could be implemented as a tool for assessing the degree of possible use of water resources by humans without compromising the functioning of the broadly understood environment. Such a method is considered as an alternative to methods of minimum acceptable flow used so far in Poland, including for example the Kostrzewa method. Material and methods 34 research catchments were analysed, diversified in terms of abiotic and biotic factors. In the first phase of work, the focus was on the living conditions of ichthyofauna and a simple hydrological formula was used to estimate the minimum flows in rivers, determined on the basis of the MesoHABSIM habitat model. Next the method was extended to include environmental requirements of macrozoobenthos. The relationship between environmental flow and water depth was developed for macrozoobenthos Results and conclusions A hybrid method was proposed, combining habitat requirements for fish and macrozoobenthos. A set of hydrological formula coefficients was included, making it possible to calculate the value of the environmental flow for each river in Poland and each of the 4 bio-periods of the year, provided that the mean annual low flow (MALF) value is known. The authors compared the value of environmental flows obtained by this method with those obtained by the Kostrzewa method, in the analysis of data from 345 river ganges. The summary indicates the weaknesses of the method, resulting from the diversity of the hydrological regime within one biotic type and the effects of averaging the coefficients.
JavaScript jest wyłączony w Twojej przeglądarce internetowej. Włącz go, a następnie odśwież stronę, aby móc w pełni z niej korzystać.