In:
Bulletin de la Société Géographique de Liège, University of Liege
Abstract:
As part of a project to re-meander the Sûre River, aiming at diversifying and increasing the quality of aquatic habitats,three beavers dams were dismantled in October 2019 to allow the passage of earthmoving machines and the digging of a new channel. This project was carried out with the aim of strengthening the populations of freshwater mussels, which are threatened and in decline in most of rivers of Wallonia and Europe. Following the installation of the beaver in this sector in 2015, a relatively large volume of fine sediment (616 m³) was trapped in the reservoirs upstream of the dams. The release of these sediments resulting from the removal of the dams could be an issue for freshwater mussels habitats. These organisms live buried in the river bed and require a well oxygenated substrate, i.e. not clogged with excess fine sediments. Several sediment monitoring methods were implemented to quantify the volume of fine sediment released and to estimate the impact of this type of intervention on the clogging of the riverbed in the short and longer term (from October 2019 to December 2020). Hydrological monitoring was also carried out at two different time steps in order to highlight the increase in flows during the dismantling operations on the one hand, and to identify the hydrological events likely to explain the fluctuations observed in the clogging during the longer-term monitoring period on the other hand.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2507-0711
,
0770-7576
Uniform Title:
Suivi hydro-sédimentaire d'un démantèlement de barrages de castors et impacts sur les habitats des moules d'eau douce
DOI:
10.25518/0770-7576.6606
Language:
French
,
French
Publisher:
University of Liege
Publication Date:
2022
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2732927-6
SSG:
14
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