Fco Javier Sanz-Ronda

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• PhD
• Professor at University of Valladolid

Invasive fish species are a major driver of freshwater ecosystem degradation across the globe. This urgent problem is particularly tough to manage in dammed rivers, where the reestablishment of longitudinal connec-tivity for native fish is achieved through the placement of fish passage devices, which can open a new corridor for the dispersal of the...

The Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) has suffered significant population declines worldwide, prompting urgent conservation efforts, especially in its southern distribution area. This study is aimed at characterising the population dynamics of Atlantic salmon in the Bidasoa River (Spain), by focusing on fluctuations and long-term trends in salmon retur...

Dams severely affect aquatic environments and block the longitudinal migration of fish. In order to mitigate the negative effects generated by these developments, fish passes, or fishways, are implemented in dams with the purpose of restoring river connectivity and allowing the movement of migrants. Nevertheless, fishways in neotropical areas often...

Fishways are a key measure to recover longitudinal connectivity. Among them, Vertical Slot Fishways (VSFs) have undergone extensive studies. However, very few numerical studies have included coupled hydrodynamics and ecological simulations. We investigated the impact of using three-dimensional (3D RANS) and two-dimensional (2D SWE) flow simulations...

Stepped fishways are the main alternative to allow fish migration in river obstacles. Their design is a multidisciplinary process, where civil engineering meets biology. This can bias the fishway design towards one discipline, which may cause low efficiencies or inadequate solutions. Likewise, it is often challenging to incorporate new discoveries...

Throughout the world, emerging barriers in river systems block longitudinal connectivity for migrating fish, causing significant impacts by precluding them from carrying out vital life cycle activities. Fishways are still the main mitigation solution implemented, where barrier removal is not feasible. Within the multiple technical fish passage devi...

1. Most freshwater fish need to move freely through rivers to complete their life cycles. Thus, river barriers (e.g. dams, culverts and gauging stations) may delay, hinder or even block their longitudinal movements, affecting fish conservation. The most widespread solution to allow upstream fish migration are fishways, whereas downstream migration...

Hydropower globally represents the main source of renewable energy, and provides several benefits, e.g., water storage and flexibility; on the other hand, it may cause significant impacts on the environment. Hence sustainable hydropower needs to achieve a balance between electricity generation, impacts on ecosystems and benefits on society, support...

Water temperature and flow velocity directly affect the fish swimming capacity, and thus, both variables influence the fish passage through river barriers. Nonetheless, their effects are usually disregarded in fishway engineering and management. This study aims to evaluate the volitional swimming capacity of the northern straight‐mouth nase (Pseudo...

The continuous observation of flows is required to assess a river’s ecological status, to allocate irrigation withdrawals, to provide sustainable hydropower production and to plan actions as well as develop adaptive management plans. Drifters have the potential of facilitating the monitoring and modeling of river behavior at a fraction of tradition...

This work aims to assess brown trout (Salmo trutta) passage through a free-flow pool-weir-type fishway with hydrodynamic notches and extreme water drops between pools. It consists of an old-school fishway design, commonly constructed in salmon rivers of Spain during the period of 1950–1980. To assess their performance, a field test was designed wit...

This chapter deals with the conventional upstream fish passage technologies developed for a safe fish migration at run-of-river hydropower plants (HPPs). It covers the factors influencing successful migration, current status, practices and challenges, novel developments, recommendations and outlook. Main focusses of this chapter are on the attracti...

Knowing the relationship between size, morphological traits and swimming performance of fish is essential to understand the swimming capacity to successfully surpass these obstacles and the selective pressure that barriers in rivers and streams could exert on fish. Northern straight-mouth nase, an endemic potamodromous cyprinid fish species from th...

River connectivity is essential for the resilience of fish assemblages and populations and is a priority goal to reach good ecological status for river systems. Increasing knowledge on the functionality of restoration tools such as fishways is relevant for future management strategies. The present two-year assessment showed clear ecological contrib...

This paper reviews different existing systems of seedling microirrigation in afforestation. These systems differ from agricultural irrigation methods since they only pursue the establishment of the planted seedlings instead of achieving good agricultural yields. They, therefore, involve very low irrigation doses compared to the usual irrigation dos...

Hydropeaking negatively affects fish assemblages, but knowledge gaps still constrain our ability to rank and mitigate the impacts of different hydropower operation regimes at particular power plants. This is especially relevant for species and rivers for which the effects of hydropeaking are less investigated, such as the Iberian Cypriniformes and...

The objective of this study is to make a comparison between two 3D CFD platforms: OpenFOAM (free and open-source CFD software) and FLOW-3D (closed source commercial CFD software), focusing on vertical slot fishways, one of the most widespread solutions to facilitate the fish migration through transversal obstacles in rivers. Considering previous co...

The monitoring of river discharge is vital for the correct management of water resources. Flat-V gauging weirs are facilities used worldwide for measuring discharge. These structures consist of a small weir with a triangular cross-section and a flat “V”-shaped notch. Their extensive use is a consequence of their utility in the measurement of both l...

The monitoring of river discharge is vital for the correct management of water resources. A worldwide facility used for measuring discharge are flat-V gauging weirs. These structures consist of a small weir, with a triangular cross-section and a flat “V”-shaped notch. Their extensive use is a consequence of their utility in the measurement of both...

River fragmentation and alterations in flow and thermal regimes are the main stressors affecting migrating fish, which could be aggravated by climate change and increasing water demand. To assess these impacts and define mitigation measures, it is vital to understand fish movement patterns and the environmental variables affecting them. This study...

Stepped fishways are structures that allow the free movement of fish in transversal obstacles in rivers. However, the lack of or incorrect maintenance may deviate them from this objective. To handle this problem, this research work presents a novel low-cost sensor network that combines fishway hydraulics with neural networks programmed in Python (K...

The control of water quality is crucial to ensure the survival of fish in aquaculture production facilities. Today, the combination of sensors with communication technologies permits to monitor these crucial parameters in real-time, allowing to take fast management decisions. However, out-of-the-box solutions are expensive, due to the small market...

The lateral line system allows fish to sense the surrounding hydrodynamics via changes in the pressure, acceleration and velocity fields, providing additional information about physical habitat structure. Relations between fish and habitat preference have been traditionally inferred using the parameters of water depth, time-averaged velocity, subst...

With the aim of building more compact fishways and adapting them to field conditions to improve their location by fish, it is common to use turning pools, reducing the longitudinal development of the construction. However, depending on their design, turning pools may affect the hydraulic performance of the fishway and consequently the fish passage....

Fish need to move upstream and downstream through rivers to complete their life cycles. Despite the fact that fishways are the most commonly applied solution to recover longitudinal con-nectivity, they are not considered viable for downstream migration. Therefore, alternative facilities are recommended to facilitate downstream migration. However, a...

This study aims to describe pre-reproductive movements of Luciobarbus bocagei and Pseudochondrostoma duriense in a regulated canyon-stretch of the Tormes River (Spain), with high environmental variability, semipermeable barriers, and fishway retrofitting actions. The main objectives were to identify peak migration dates and environmental drivers, t...

Fishways are used worldwide to restore fish migration routes. However, there are few standardized metrics that allow the comparison of their performance in a consistence manner. This paper aims to assess fishway internal passage using two standardized metrics: passage success and transit time. Data from selected 20 field stepped fishways evaluation...

Effective protection of migratory fish requires long‐term conservation encompassing active restoration and management measures with follow‐up studies. The main findings of long‐term (1995–2019) monitoring of anadromous and potamodromous brown trout Salmo trutta in the River Bidasoa are presented. The main aims were evaluating trout number and media...

In a recent article, we described fitting electronic tags to the fish Prochilodus lineatus to document how a fishway connected aquatic habitats downstream and upstream of a major dam. Moreover, given that tagged fish remained upstream or downstream for periods extending months and years before returning to the fishway, and that observed patterns of...

Restoring the longitudinal connectivity of rivers is one of the main objectives of environmental European directives and policies. Fish passes or fishways are one of the most common actions for its restoration. Despite the great number of fish passes constructed during the last two decades to comply with these policies, few of them have been assess...

Knowing the relationship between morphological traits and swimming capacity of fish is essential to understand on the one hand, the selective pressure that barriers in rivers and streams can exert on these organisms and, on the other, the swimming capacity of the individuals of this species to successfully surpass these obstacles. Northern straigh...

Endemic freshwater fish from semiarid environments are among the most threated species in the world due to water overexploitation and habitat fragmentation problems. Stepped or pool-type fishways are used worldwide to reestablish longitudinal connectivity and mitigate fish migration problems. Many of them are being installed or planned in rivers of...

Endemic freshwater fish from semiarid environments are among the most threated species in the world due to the water overexploitation and habitat fragmentation problems. Stepped or pool-type fishways are used worldwide to reestablish longitudinal connectivity and mitigate fish migration problems. Many of them are being installed or planned in river...

South American rivers have become intensely affected by the construction of hydroelectric dams that block the river's connectivity for migratory fish species. In order to mitigate the problems caused by dams and to reestablish connections between habitats, fishways are implemented. Fishways are structures that aid fish in overcoming obstacles and h...

La gestión de los recursos hídricos precisa de datos fiables del caudal circulante por los ríos. Las estaciones de aforo V-flat proporcionan información de calidad, especialmente para flujos bajos, de ahí su proliferación en España durante este siglo. Sin embargo, en función de sus dimensiones, del salto de agua que provoca y del caudal circulante,...

Las escalas para peces de estanques sucesivos ayudan a mitigar los problemas a la migración de los peces que causan las barreras artificiales en los ríos, y son utilizadas en todo el mundo para restaurar la conectividad longitudinal. Durante el período 2015/16, en el contexto del proyecto LIFE+ Segura Riverlink-LIFE12 ENV/ES/001140-, cuatro de esto...

El proyecto LIFE+ Segura-Riverlink ha tenido como finalidad la recuperación de la conectividad en un tramo fluvial del cauce principal del río Segura. Una de las medidas implementadas para recuperar la conectividad longitudinal ha sido la creación de pasos para peces. En el presente estudio se muestran los resultados sobre dos programas de seguimie...

Resumen Tras casi 5 años de proyecto, el proyecto LIFE Segura Riverlink dio por finalizado su andadura el pasado año. Este proyecto ha sido muy innovador al ser uno de los proyectos de continuidad fluvial en el ámbito mediterráneo más ambiciosos. La principal acción del proyecto era permeabilizar unos 50 kilómetros de río Segura mediante la demolic...

El grado de alteración antropogénica en los ecosistemas fluviales es elevado, debido, fundamentalmente, a la creación de barreras transversales (presas, azudes, estaciones de aforo, caños de drenaje, etc.), que alteran su conectividad longitudinal, causando, entre otros impactos, la fragmentación del hábitat. Esta problemática afecta a los peces mi...

Las obras transversales en los ríos, aunque necesarias en muchos casos, conllevan también impactos negativos de gran relevancia. Entre los más destacados está la dificultad al movimiento longitudinal de los peces, necesario para desarrollar sus funciones vitales. Para mitigar este problema, una de las soluciones más utilizadas son las escalas de ar...

La construcción de obras transversales en los cursos de agua causa, entre otros aspectos, un gran impacto en la continuidad longitudinal de los ecosistemas fluviales. Para paliarlo y permitir el libre desplazamiento de la fauna (especialmente peces) es frecuente la construcción de pasos piscícolas. Sin embargo, a pesar de haberse construido en gran...

La trucha común (Salmo trutta) es una especie ampliamente distribuida a lo largo del mundo y de gran importancia social y económica. En general, el descenso de la temperatura del agua y el aumento de caudal estimulan su migración reproductiva. Por lo tanto, alteraciones antropogénicas de estos factores pueden causar impactos negativos en sus poblac...

The conservation of migratory fish species worldwide has been threatened by the loss of longitudinal connectivity caused by dams intercepting large rivers. One environmental management strategy for reestablishing connectivity is providing passage through fish ladders. However, ladders in Neotropical rivers have been described as ascending one-way r...

The Iberian native freshwater fish fauna consists of 69 species (Ordeix & Casals, in prep), and almost all of them (95.7%) clearly migrate during their life cycle. Their migratory movements are extensive in time, and influenced by the large variation in seasonal river discharge and water temperature that is characteristic of the Mediterranean clima...

When engineers and ecologists face a fishway design, many issues need to be considered, the type of fishway being the first and foremost. It is an especially complex issue in areas with species whose migratory and swimming behavior are as yet poorly known as Mediterranean barbels. The present study focuses on the fish passage of two of the most com...

Brown trout uses river flow and thermal regimens as main stimuli for initiating and maintaining behavioral reactions such as migration and spawning. Therefore, anthropogenic alterations on these factors may have strong impacts on its populations. The aim of this work is to understand these consequences by assessing potamodromous brown trout movemen...

El presente trabajo analiza la capacidad voluntaria de nado del barbo ibérico (Luciobarbus bocagei Steindachner, 1864) en un canal abierto durante su época de migración, relacionándola con factores ambientales y biométricos. La temperatura del agua, la velocidad de flujo y la longitud del pez fueron los factores de mayor importancia que condicionar...

Análisis de la conectividad longitudinal en el río Franco

Many fish passes have been built across the world in recent years. This study analyses the performance of a modified type of pool and weir fishway with two access branches, using passive integrated transponder telemetry. A circum-Mediterranean barbel, Luciobarbus bocagei (Steindachner, 1864), was chosen as the target species. Both hydraulic values...

We hypothesized that the use of habitat by two armored catfish species, Ancistrus aff. cirrhosus and Hypostomus ancistroides, which share the same stream reach, is temporally segregated. To test this, fish residence time within a culvert and fish movements through the culvert were analyzed in relation to the daily hours, lunar cycle and discharge u...

Stepped fishways are the most popular solutions to enable the free movement of fish fauna through weirs and dams. Given the flow variation of rivers throughout the year, successful fish migration through stepped fishways relies on the accurate discharge calculation and their modeling under variable scenarios. This study aims to propose a general me...

The LIFE+ Segura-Riverlink is a project which aims to validate management measures for the development of a Green Infrastructure (GI) approach into the context of Mediterranean river basins characterized by high impacts. The project will recover the longitudinal connectivity in a sector of 54 km long in the Segura River implementing fish passes ove...

Migrating fish are vulnerable to anthropogenic disturbances and, to assess the impact of human activities in freshwater ecosystems, it is vital to understand their movement patterns. The aim of this study is to describe the upstream movements of potamodromous brown trout Salmo trutta (seasonal and daily) and the potential environmental triggers in...

Passage performance of brown trout (Salmo trutta), Iberian barbel (Luciobarbus bocagei), and northern straight-mouth nase (Pseudochondrostoma duriense) was investigated in a vertical slot fishway in the Porma River (Duero River basin, Spain) using PIT telemetry. We analysed the effects of different fishway discharges on motivation and passage succe...

Fishways are structures that aim to achieve the free movement of fish through transversal obstacles in rivers. Despite the wide research about their performance, their hydraulic study and characterization has been so far limited to uniform hydraulic conditions which are usually difficult to reach in natural scenarios, either because inaccurate buil...

Habitat connectivity is a central factor in shaping aquatic and riverine biological communities, however, few tools exist to maintain and recover this attribute at large scale in fluvial systems. The Segura-Riverlink is a LIFE Programme project which aims to promote and support the environmental recovery of a fluvial sector of the Segura River Basi...

Evaluation; fishway; fish ladder; fish passage; Duero river basin

Performance; evaluation; fishway; fish ladder; river continuity

Dreissena polymorpha (zebra mussel) is a freshwater bivalve mollusc and has been present for more than one decade in Spain. The zebra mussel causes serious ecological and socioeconomic impacts in areas where they settle. Our research aims to analyze its hydraulic habitat, developing physical models for this species, which indicates its preference a...

Vertical slot fishways are a type of fish pass of wide operating range that allow fish to move across obstacles in rivers. This study aims to model the performance of these structures, under uniform and nonuniform flow conditions, using discharge coefficients involving the downstream water level together with a logical algorithm. This will allow an...

La fauna piscícola en la Península Ibérica se ha situado siempre en un plano secundario en lo que a investigación y conservación se refiere. Prueba de este olvido histórico es, que desde 2005 hasta la actualidad, se han identificado 25 de las 100 especies de peces existentes en España. La gestión de la pesca tampoco se escapa de esta situación. Es...

History of fishways in Spanish rivers

The aim of this article is to establish guidelines for the calculation of log-crib walls stability, popularly known like Krainer walls. These structures combine both engineered and biological features and that is the reason why they require stability calculation. The existing information about walls is large but not specific about this technique. I...

Sprinting behavior of free-ranging fish has long been thought to exceed that of captive fish. Here we present data from wild-caught brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) and brown trout (Salmo trutta), volitionally entering and sprinting against high-velocity flows in an open-channel flume. Performance of the two species was nearly identical, with th...

El presente artículo evalúa una escala de peces de la tipología hendidura vertical para la trucha común (Salmo trutta) en el río Porma (cuenca Duero), en la zona noroeste de España. Este tipo de paso para peces es uno de los más utilizados en todo el mundo y en la Península Ibérica su uso se está incrementando rápidamente. Sin embargo, su idoneidad...

Nature like fish passes are an interesting alternative compared to traditional fishways, for small and medium height weirs. These structures try to imitate riffle-pool sequences in a natural river. They can be low slope "rock ramps" (<10%), placed downstream of the dam or "bypass channels", that bypass the obstacle on the riverside. In any case, bo...

The purpose of this paper is to indicate some guidelines for log crib walls stability calculation. These bioengineering structures combine inert and life elements and must have associated stability calculation and design. We propose a method based on checking admissible strains. It considers the horizontal and vertical strengths working on the wall...

Flat-V gauging weirs are small structures (currently 0.5-1 m) which have a triangular longitudinal profile and a crest in the form of shallow “V”. The main advantage over other gauging systems is the accuracy offered to low flows. However, the hydraulic precision contrasts with the environmental impact they cause: the vast majority of the Iberian m...

La cuantificación del hábitat fluvial es la operación más importante dentro de los estudios de caudales ecológicos que se basan en modelos del hábitat físico. Este proceso se realiza dividiendo el área de estudio en segmentos (tramos de río con un régimen de caudales y unas características geomorfológicas homogéneas) que son analizados empleando do...

En este trabajo se analiza la situación de los ríos del entorno urbano de la ciudad de Ávila: el Adaja y el Chico. Se estudian, entre otros aspectos, el estado de conservación como ecosistemas naturales, los beneficios y perjuicios de la regulación de sus caudales, los posibles impactos de obras ejecutadas (encauzamientos, urbanización y ajardinami...

En el presente trabajo se han estudiado los usos que se desarrollan en el río Adaja y en sus riberas, desde su nacimiento en la provincia de Ávila hasta su confluencia con el Duero en la provincia de Valladolid. En base a la Directiva Marco del Agua de la Unión Europea, se han detectado aquellos aprovechamientos insostenibles o impactantes, se han...

En el presente trabajo se han estudiado los usos que se desarrollan en el río Adaja y en sus riberas, desde su nacimiento en la provincia de Ávila hasta su confluencia con el Duero en la provincia de Valladolid. En base a la Directiva Marco del Agua de la Unión Europea, se han detectado aquellos aprovechamientos insostenibles o impactantes, se han...

Quantifying stream habitat is essential in many environmental flow studies based on physical habitat models. That process begins by dividing the study area into segments (river stretches with homogeneous flow regimes and geomorphological features). The segments will be analysed by-means of two basic sampling strategies: representative reach and mes...