Ine Pauwels

Ine Pauwels
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) Belgium · Aquatic Management Research Unit

Doctor of Applied Biological Sciences

About

53
Publications
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Introduction
Interests: aquatic ecology; human induced pressure and climate change effects on aquatic ecosystems; river restoration; fish behavior (migration, movement, habitat use). Field techniques: fish sampling; habitat evaluation; aquatic animal telemetry (radio, PIT and acoustic). Projects: hydropower impact on fish; fish migration, movement and habitat use in the vicinity of barriers and the impact on fish populations and large and fine scale behavior; assessment of fish pass facilities.

Publications

Publications (53)
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Since the 1960s, many rivers in Central Asia have been fragmented (partially or completely) by the construction of numerous irrigation and hydropower facilities, which have changed the composition of ichthyofauna due to the blocking of migration routes. The article describes the results of environmental investigations to study the current state of...
Article
Full-text available
Additional and refurbished pumping stations are required to mitigate the intensifying occurrence of droughts and floodings. These installations negatively impact threatened freshwater fish populations due to the increased risk of injury and mortality when fish pass through them. Fish-friendly pumping installations have been proposed as a potential...
Chapter
Rivers worldwide are becoming increasingly changed by human activities. Barriers, such as dams, are a frequent feature in rivers and have many impacts, from altering river hydraulics to impeding fish migration. Hydraulic conditions around a barrier and pass may be very different from natural systems and confuse approaching fish as they attempt to p...
Article
Full-text available
Reservoirs are subject to artificial water level fluctuations leading to a degradation of the littoral habitats. This often results in reduced productivity and biological diversity, particularly for fish. The development of predictive tools of fish population dynamics linked to habitat characteristics can help to optimize management actions such as...
Article
Full-text available
Insight into the detection range of acoustic telemetry systems is crucial for both sampling design and data interpretation. The detection range is highly dependent on the environmental conditions and can consequently be substantially different among aquatic systems. Also within systems, temporal variability can be significant. The number of studies...
Article
Full-text available
Many fish species depend on migration for various parts of their life cycle. Well‐known examples include diadromous fish such as salmon and eels that need both fresh water and salt water to complete their life cycle. Migration also occurs within species that depend only on fresh water. In recent decades, anthropogenic pressures on freshwater system...
Article
Full-text available
Geolocating aquatic animals with acoustic tags has been ongoing for decades, relying on the detection of acoustic signals at multiple receivers with known positions to calculate a 2D or 3D position, and ultimately recreate the path of an aquatic animal from detections at fixed stations. This method of underwater geolocation is evolving with new sof...
Article
Full-text available
Background Migration is a vital element of the life cycle of many freshwater fish species but is increasingly hampered globally by riverine barriers. Fish passes are a common approach to enable migration past barriers but are often ineffective. More knowledge is required on fish behaviour as they approach barriers such as habitat preferences. Meth...
Article
Full-text available
Background Fish migration has severely been impacted by dam construction. Through the disruption of fish migration routes, freshwater fish communities have seen an incredible decline. Fishways, which have been constructed to mitigate the problem, have been shown to underperform. This is in part due to fish navigation still being largely misundersto...
Article
River fragmentation is an increasing issue for water managers and conservationists. Barriers such as dams interfere with freshwater fish migration, leading to drastic population declines. While there are a range of widely implemented mitigation approaches, e.g. fish passes, such measures are often inefficient due to suboptimal operation and design....
Article
Full-text available
The global presence of plastic litter and its accumulation in the environment has become an issue of concern to the public and policymakers. This concern has triggered innovators in past decades to design and develop a multitude of remediation technologies to prevent plastic from entering the environment, or to clean up legacy litter. This study ai...
Article
Full-text available
Animals need to move between different habitats to successfully complete their life cycle. Anthropogenic activities and infrastructure impact animal movement, especially in the aquatic realm, due to habitat alteration (including fragmentation), pollution, overexploitation, the spread of invasive alien species and climate change. Gaining knowledge o...
Chapter
Full-text available
Fish passing downstream through hydraulic structures and turbines may risk dying or getting injured. Archimedes screw turbines are frequently considered more “fishfriendly” than conventional turbines. However, to date only a handful of studies assess the impact of Archimedes screws. Within the FIThydro project, we investigated injury and mortality...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The RETERO project aims to reduce live fish experiments for the physical evaluation of injury and mortality risks during downstream passage through turbines, weirs or bypasses and to improve the predictions of numerical models. The focus of this presentation is on the design of a new “backpack sensor” for downstream passage studies which does not u...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding animal movement is essential to elucidate how animals interact, survive, and thrive in a changing world. Recent technological advances in data collection and management have transformed our understanding of animal “movement ecology” (the integrated study of organismal movement), creating a big-data discipline that benefits from rapid,...
Article
Full-text available
Current mitigation strategies to offset marine plastic pollution, a global concern, typically rely on preventing floating debris from reaching coastal ecosystems. Specifically, clean-up technologies are designed to collect plastics by removing debris from the aquatic environment such as rivers and estuaries. However, to date, there is little publis...
Article
Contrary to small-and medium-sized rivers, little attention has been paid to the downstream migration of Atlantic salmon smolts in large-sized rivers and the size-related impact of hydropower stations. From 2014 to 2016, we investigated the downstream migration of n = 72 acoustic-tagged smolts in the Meuse river at a bifurcation zone between a hydr...
Article
Full-text available
Fish passing downstream through hydraulic structures and turbines may be exposed to an elevated risk of injury and mortality. The majority of live fish studies are single-species laboratory investigations and field studies of Kaplan turbines, with a limited number of studies in Francis and screw turbines. In addition to these studies, the physical...
Article
Full-text available
Migrating fish species are worldwide in decline due to several global changes and threats. Among these causes are man‐made structures blocking their freshwater migration routes. Shipping canals with navigation locks play a dual role in this. These canals can serve as an important migration route, offering a short cut between freshwater and the sea....
Article
Full-text available
Background Acoustic positioning telemetry allows to collect large amounts of data on the movement of aquatic animals by use of autonomous receiver stations. Essential in this process is the conversion from raw signal detections to reliable positions. A new advancement in the domain is Yet Another Positioning Solver (YAPS), which combines the detect...
Article
Full-text available
Background Acoustic positioning telemetry is nowadays widely used in behavioural ecology of aquatic animals. Data on the animal’s geographical location and its changes through time are used to study for instance movement patterns, habitat use and migration. The acoustic signals are detected by stand-alone receivers, allowing to collect huge amounts...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Acoustic positioning telemetry allows to collect large amounts of data on the movement of aquatic animals by use of autonomous receiver stations. Essential in this process is the conversion from raw signal detections to reliable positions. A new advancement in the domain is YAPS (Yet Another Positioning Solver), which combines the detec...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Acoustic positioning telemetry allows to collect large amounts of data on the movement of aquatic animals by use of autonomous receiver stations. Essential in this process is the conversion from raw signal detections to reliable positions. A new advancement in the domain is YAPS (Yet Another Positioning Solver), which combines the detec...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Acoustic positioning telemetry allows to collect large amounts of data on the movement of aquatic animals by use of autonomous receiver stations. Essential in this process is the conversion from raw signal detections to reliable positions. A new advancement in the domain is YAPS (Yet Another Positioning Solver), which combines the detect...
Article
Aquatic biotelemetry techniques have proven to be valuable tools to generate knowledge on species behaviour, gather oceanographic data and help in assessing effects from anthropogenic disturbances. These data types support international policies and directives, needed for species and habitat conservation. As aquatic systems are highly interconnecte...
Article
Full-text available
Navigation in inland waterways is increasingly important worldwide and so is inherently the construction and use of navigation locks. However, the impact of navigation locks on downstream migrating fish is rarely documented. In Belgium, the Albert Canal connecting the Meuse River to the Scheldt Estuary may offer migration opportunities for European...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Hydraulic structures such as navigation locks, pumping stations, and hydropower plants play an important role in navigation, water management, and sustainable energy production. However, these structures may severely impact the aquatic ecosystem and freshwater fish in particular. In Belgium, the Albert Canal connecting the river Meuse to the river...
Article
Connectivity between freshwater habitats and marine areas is heavily obstructed by anthropogenic structures (e.g. weirs, pumping stations, sluices…), leading to a high pressure on diadromous fish populations. A better understanding of fish migration behaviour in relation to these barriers is needed to take proper mitigation actions. We investigated...
Poster
Full-text available
Worldwide, water levels of freshwater systems are controlled by structures such as pumping stations, weirs, dams and sluices. These structures can cause substantial mortalities to the European eel (Anguilla anguilla L.). However, pumping stations may also affect migration behaviour, resulting in delays or even migration stops. In this study, we ass...
Article
Full-text available
Due to a recruitment decline of more than 90% in 30 years, the European eel (Anguilla anguilla L.) has been classified by IUCN as critically endangered. Although the species has been studied intensively to obtain knowledge to improve management, studies about the resident yellow stage are relatively scarce. In this study, 52 large female yellow eel...
Article
Full-text available
In the present research, we found that different preprocessing options and parameterizations of classification and regression trees alter their model fit and have a direct effect on their applicability for end-users. We found that, in terms of applicability, classification trees react different to pruning than regression trees. Indeed, in case of h...
Article
To efficiently manage northern pike (Esox lucius), information is needed on its habitat use and preference. However, knowledge gaps still exist, especially on pike habitat use and preference in rivers characterised by artificial environments. We investigated the use of the main river, tributaries and side arms at the macro-scale, and the use and pr...
Article
Full-text available
Worldwide large investments in wastewater treatment are made to improve water quality. However, the impacts of these investments on river water quality are often not quantified. To assess water quality, the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) requests to use an integrated approach. The aim of this study was to develop an integrated ecological...
Article
The aim of this study was to predict the future distribution of an invasive macroinvertebrate species, Dikerogammarus villosus, under changing environmental conditions. For this, we used an integrated modelling approach. First, a habitat suitability model (HSM) was constructed on the basis of a regression tree model, to determine the preferred chem...
Thesis
Full-text available
De status van verschillende vissoorten in ons land, waaronder ook snoek (Esox lucius) voldoet niet aan de gestelde Europese vereisten. Behalve door een matige chemische waterkwaliteit komt dit voornamelijk door een ondermaatse habitatkwaliteit door habitatdegradatie, fragmentatie en obstructie. Rivierbeheerders plannen daarom maatregelen om het hab...
Article
Teaching students to develop data-driven models is a challenging task as a good balance has to be found between the theoretical background of the models, the ecological relevance of the knowledge rules inferred and their socio-economic applicability. In this context it is unclear which aspects of the modeling process are easily understood by studen...
Article
Full-text available
Northern pike, Esox lucius, needs different habitats to survive and reproduce and thus depends on the availability and accessibility of these habitats. To efficiently manage pike, information is needed on its spatial and temporal patterns of migration. In this study, we investigated the occurrence of adult pike migration and which environmental var...
Article
For many decades, pike populations in Belgium have been suffering from a decline of the environmental quality due to habitat deterioration, water pollution and many other degrading phenomena. Since past attempts to rehabilitate the pike populations had only limited success, it is of importance to gain insight into the spatio-temporal dynamics of pi...
Article
In the scope of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) river restoration has received increased attention. By restoring the physical habitat it is expected that the natural dynamics of the aquatic system improve and thus the good ecological status can be achieved or maintained by 2015. To this end, several restoration actions, such as the con...
Conference Paper
Pike (Esox lucius L.) populations have been suffering from habitat degradation and the increasing number of restoration programs had only limited success. In order to set up more effective restoration programmes in the future, it is important to gain insight into the spatio-temporal dynamics of pike. Because no efforts have been spent to develop a...
Article
Cellular automata (CAs) allow for transparent modelling of complex systems based on simple transition rules and are flexible in incorporating individual differences and local interactions. They may therefore be particularly suited to answer river management questions that could not be addressed by existing habitat suitability models, such as the op...
Article
The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires that the ecological water quality in all European member states reaches a good biological status by 2015. The biologicakl status of watercourses is expressed through a scoring system of between 0 (bad status) and 1 (high status), known as the Ecological Quality Ratio (EQR), for 'macroinvertebrat...
Article
Full-text available
The European Water Framework Directive has a high impact on current water management in Belgium. Several restoration scenarios have been worked out by the government. To compare the effect of these scenarios, a combination of a water quality (PEGASE) and ecological assessment models (data driven models based on regression trees) has been developed...
Article
De ecologische waterkwaliteit van het oppervlaktewater wordt uitgedrukt door middel van een Ecologische Kwaliteitsratio (EKR-score) voor verschillende biologische kwaliteitselementen. Een EKR-score is de verhouding tussen de actuele ecologische toestand en de referentietoestand en wordt uitgedrukt op een schaal van één (zeer goede toestand) tot nul...

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