An ecological hydraulic radius approach to estimate the instream ecological water requirement

摘要

This essay defines the concepts of ecological flow velocity as well as ecological hydraulic radius (EHR) and proposes an ecological hydraulic radius approach (EHRA) which considers both the watercourse information (including hydraulic radius, roughness coefficient and hydraulic gradient) and the required stream velocity necessary for maintenance of certain ecological functions all together. The key parameter of EHRA is to fix the watercourse cross-sectional flow area corresponding to EHR, by which the relation between parabola shaped cross-sectional flow area and hydraulic radius is deduced. The EHRA not only meets the requirement of flow velocity for adequate fish spawning migration, but also is applicable to the ecological flows in regard with other ecological issues (such as the calculation of the instream flow requirements for transporting sediment and for pollution self-purification, etc.). This essay has illuminated the computational process taking the estimation of ecological water requirement of Zhuba Hydrologyical Station watercourse in Niqu branch of the Yalong River as an example. Additionally, we compare EHRA with Tennant approach.,) The result shows that the Zhuba Hydrological Station ecological water requirement calculated by EHRA lies between the minimum and favorable ecological water requirement calculated by the Tennant approach. This is due to the fact that the ecological flow velocity (such as the fish spawning migration flow velocity) was taken into consideration, producing results applicable to the practical situation.