Freeing up rivers: will the wild fish communities return when river continuum is restored?
Main funder
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 130 596,00
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/02/2024
Project end date: 31/12/2027
Summary
Here, we aim to investigate the ecological impact of large-scale dam removal process presently conducted in River Hiitolanjoki, South-Eastern Finland. We focus on changes in fish habitat, community, and fish migration. We also evaluate the energy transfer through multiple trophic levels and ultimately variation in food chain length as a surrogate to ecosystem functioning. This project is conducted in multidisciplinary collaboration with Aalto University (AU) and Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). In addition to investigating ecological effects (this PhD project), researchers from Luke are concentrating on understanding the changes in greenhouse gas emissions and social aspects of the dam removals and researchers from AU are studying changes in hydraulics and riverine morphodynamics, and the effects of dam removals on resilience of microalgae and periphyton as primary producers of the ecosystem. The monitoring has been ongoing since summer 2020, thus allowing us to compare the conditions before (2020–2023) and after (2021–2024) each dam removal action and restoration of the opening sites. The scientific information on hydraulic changes and sedimentation (AU) as well as stakeholders’ views on the process provided by these other projects form the crucial basis to study ecological changes suggested in this proposal.
