Gabriele Consoli

University of Lausanne | UNIL · Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics (IDYST)

Flow regulation of montane and alpine headwater streams can fundamentally alter food web structure and energy flows through changes in productivity, resource availability, and community assembly. Dam flow-release schemes can be used to mitigate the environmental impacts of flow regulation via environmental flows, which can increase discharge variab...

Artificial high flows attempt to simulate natural flood pulses in flow-regulated rivers with the intent to improve their ecological integrity. The long-term use of such high flow events have shown beneficial ecological effects on various rivers globally. However, such responses are often non-linear and characterized by underlying feedback mechanism...

The widespread presence of dams in the Alps has deprived most alpine streams of their dynamic character. Alpine streams are naturally subject to strong disturbance drivers where high flow variability and large sediment loads drive environmental conditions. Dams disrupt flow and sediment regimes, modifying the habitat template and the equilibrium be...

In spring 2019, streams in the Karun River catchment, the biggest river in Iran, experienced three major waves of rain within two weeks, which resulted in extreme floods. Floods generate natural disturbance in river systems, promoting fluvial dynamics and sustaining eco-morphological processes. Macroinvertebrates play a key role in fluvial ecosyste...

Alpine streams are dynamic systems, subject to strong disturbance drivers. Environmental conditions are characterized by high discharge variability and large sediment loads. Flow regulation for hydropower is widespread in the alpine area, where numerous dams have been built to exploit the high-head potential of steep valleys. Dams alter both water...

The Macun lakes form a high-alpine (> 2,600 m asl) cirque landscape (3.6 km 2) in the Swiss National Park, comprising 26 small lakes together with a number of temporary ponds. Streams interconnect the four largest lakes, forming the drainage network that flows into the Inn River at the town of Lavin. The drainage network of Macun consists of a nort...

Rivers regulated by dams display several ecosystem alterations due to modified flow and sediment regimes. Downstream from a dam, ecosystem degradation occurs because of reduced disturbance, mostly derived from limitations on flow variability and sediment supply. In the last decade, most flow restoration/dam impact mitigation was oriented towards th...

Exploitation of hydropower potential in alpine areas undermines the ecological integrity of rivers. Damming and water abstraction substantially alter the physical habitat template of rivers, with strong repercussions on aquatic communities and their resources. Tools are needed to predict and manage the consequences of these alterations on the struc...

Freshwater ecosystems across the world are facing the pressure of multiple stressors, undergoing alarming ecological degradation. The exploitation of hydropower potential of rivers has substantially altered natural flow and sediment regimes, considerably contributing to habitat degradation and biodiversity loss in fluvial networks .These alteration...

Experimental floods are operational measures designed to restore flow variability and mitigate dam impacts on rivers. Flow-sediment interactions during experimental floods represent strong ecosystem drivers, influencing nutrient dynamics, metabolic and functional properties. Thus, it is relevant to understand how different sediment inputs influence...

Growing trends in global energy demand and the dramatic projections of climate change scenarios have increased the importance of renewable energy sources in the last decades. In this context hydropower plays a major role. Hydropower provides society with undeniable benefits but it is burdened by a long list of drawbacks that heavily impact stream e...