HERI – Research Actions Database

Description

AMBER joined together 20 European partners including academics, conservation foundations (WWF, World Fish Migration Foundation), energy providers (EDF, Sydkraft Hydropower) and policy advisors (European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC)). The team further engaged with key stakeholder institutions worldwide such as angling associations, environment ministries, fisheries agencies, river trusts and energy providers just to name a few. AMBER provided the first comprehensive estimate of river fragmentation in Europe based on empirical and modelled barrier densities. A multidisciplinary team of researchers assembled 629,955 unique barrier records from 36 European countries and surveyed 2,715 km of 147 rivers to ground truth barrier densities. They also modelled the location and number of missing barriers. Resource managers need to be able to quantify stream fragmentation, assess barrier impacts and benefits, and make better, informed decisions. The AMBER team developed a set of tools based on existing and future barriers based on what if scenarios. Tools included the: AMBER Barrier Atlas: The most comprehensive overview of available information on barriers in Europe, showing more than 600,000 mapped obstacles. AMBER Barrier Tracker: The first citizen science app to record river barriers. By using the app citizens can become scientists helping reconnect European rivers, track barriers, and learn about their impacts.

Organisations

• Swansea University

Funding

Specific Funding Sources:
European Commission

Level of Action:

European

Applications

Small-hydro, Large-hydro, Run-of-the-River, Storage Hydropower

Keywords

Awareness, Dams, Ecology, Flood management, Modeling / Simulation, River management, Sustainability, Weirs

Areas of Research

Last Updated: 22/02/2024 09:46

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