Juan Francisco Fuentes-Pérez

University of Valladolid | UVA · Group of Applied Ecohydraulics

Global stocks of freshwater fish have been on the decline for decades, driven in part by the obstruction of their migration routes by anthropogenic barriers. To mitigate such impacts, fishways have been developed to facilitate bidirectional fish migration. These structures are affected by the hydrological variability of rivers, which can cause chan...

Fish require access to multiple habitats to persist. Therefore, obstacles blocking a fish's volitional ability to move between habitats can lead to its decline. A common way of addressing this problem is the construction of fishways. The design criteria of fishways are based on steady, uniform flows with the assumption that the water levels remain...

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...

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...

The beekeeping sector is increasingly focused on creating optimal and natural environments for honeybees to reduce dependence on external factors, especially given progressively hotter summers. Improving hive thermal conditions can enhance bee wellbeing and production. While pinewood hives are predominant, some have started using insulating materia...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Walking underwater reduces joint impacts, enhances stability and lowers the net body weight of the patient during rehabilitation. It is a recent rehabilitation method and few suitable methods exist to study underwater gait kinematics. We propose an underwater inertial measurement (IMU) system analogous to those used in land-based rehabilitation to...

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...

High-resolution (1 – 10 m) observations of supraglacial streams are needed to improve process understanding and inform low-resolution (25 – 100 m) remote sensing observations and numerical models. To address this, we built small (0.25 m diameter) satellite positioning drifters. The devices recorded the surface flow velocity, linear acceleration and...

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...

A novel pressure sensing system specialized for ecohydraulic field measurement , "sphera", was developed to record synchronized three-point absolute pressure measurement at 20 or 50 Hz. Three pressure sensors were embedded into a concrete body with a cobble-like shape. The device was used to record the pressure time series of the near-bed pressure...

High-resolution (1-10 m) observations of supraglacial streams are needed to improve process understanding and inform low-resolution (25-100 m) remote sensing observations and numerical models. To address this, we built small (0.25 m diameter) satellite positioning drifters. The devices recorded the surface flow velocity, linear acceleration and mag...

Reliable navigation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) depends on the quality of their state estimation. Providing robust velocity estimation plays thus an important role. While water currents are main contributors to the navigational uncertainty of AUVs, they are also an important variable for oceanographic research. For both reasons water c...

The flow regime is a determinant of the ecological function and natural dynamics of a river system with a prominent effect on freshwater fish. Here, we introduce a number of contributions to the Special Session, “Ecohydraulics of river flow alterations and impacts on freshwater fish,” that occurred at the XIX Conference of the Iberian Association o...

Marine and Underwater resources are important part of the economy of many countries. This requires significant financial resources into their construction and maintentance. Robotics is expected to fill this void, by automating and/or removing humans from hostile environments in order to easily perform maintenance tasks. The Robocademy Marie Sklodow...

In recent years, flow sensing has gotten the attention of the robotics community as an exteroceptive sensing modality, in addition to the conventional underwater sensing modalities of vision and sonar. Earlier works on flow sensing for robotics focus on detection and characterization of objects’ wakes, with the focus slowly evolving towards more co...

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,...

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...

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...

Velocity estimation is central for the reliable navigation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Doppler velocity logs (DVLs), currently the leading technology for underwater velocity estimation, can be too big, expensive, and energy consuming to be used on low-cost and small AUVs or for long missions. In our previous work, a system based on di...

Hydropeaking is the rapid change in the water flow downstream of a hydropower plant, driven by changes in daily electricity demand. These fluctuations may produce negative effects in freshwater fish. To minimize these impacts, previous studies have proposed habitat enhancement structures as potential mitigation measures for salmonids. However, the...

L. bocagei physiological and behavioural data collected. (XLSX)

Data obtained from the fish-inspired lateral line probe (LLP). (XLSX)

Contour representation of mean front fluctuations (p¯'12). (EPS)

Contour representation of mean pressure asymmetry (Δp¯1−6). (EPS)

Contour representation of mean front pressure (p¯12). (EPS)

Vertical-slot fishways (VSFs) are hydraulic structures which allow fish to swim around obstacles in rivers. These structures are subject to variations in discharge of either hydrological or operational origin, which result in nonuniform water depth profiles. These profiles are manifested as differences in the water drops across the slots (ΔH) and m...

The local flows within a fishway present a wide spectrum of hydrodynamic conditions and are themselves subject to the natural variability of the river they are connected to. Investigations of fish behavior under different flow scenarios in laboratory fishways can aid in identifying the statistically significant preferences of fish. Once patterns ha...

Surface water flows are driven by large-scale atmospheric and gravitational forces. Aquatic organisms embedded within these hydrosystems experience their surroundings via an active, body-oriented sensory space. Their flow sensing system must be capable of distinguishing valuable stimuli over a wide range of spatiotemporal scales and separating them...

Upstream fish passage around instream barriers is typically facilitated by the installation of fishway structures. However, at some locations it is necessary to install fish lifts, which directly transport the fish vertically over and around the barrier. In this work, we report biological observations from the fish lift Runserau on the River Inn in...

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...

User Guide for MATLAB code and link to all measurement data: https://github.com/jtuhtan/hydro-sig

The lateral line system provides fish with advanced mechanoreception over a wide range of flow conditions. Inspired by the abilities of their biological counterparts, artificial lateral lines have been developed and tested exclusively under laboratory settings. Motivated by the lack of flow measurements taken in the field which consider fluid-body...

Autonomous underwater vehicles require estimation of their velocity relative to the surrounding flow to perform essential navigation tasks. Available technologies for speed estimation rely on Doppler velocity logs or acoustic Doppler current profilers and are not suitable for application in small low cost or energy consumption vehicles. Encouraged...

River system measurement and mapping using UAVs is both lean and agile, with the added advantage of increased safety for the surveying crew. A common parameter of fluvial geomorphological studies is the flow velocity, which is a major driver of sediment behavior. Advances in fluid mechanics now include metrics describing the presence and interactio...

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 time-averaged velocity of water flow is the most commonly measured metric for both laboratory and field applications. Its employment in scientific and engineering studies often leads to an oversimplification of the underlying flow physics. In reality, complex flows are ubiquitous, and commonly arise from fluid-body interactions with man-made st...

Seit 2011 wurden durch die EnBW in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Institut für Umwelt studien Versuche zum Scheuchen und Leiten von Fisch en mit elektrischem Strom durchgeführt. Dabei wurde neben der Barrierewirkung von elektrischen Feldern auch die Möglichkeit zum Stoppen und Leiten von Fisch en entlang elektrifizierter Rechenanlagen untersucht. Die Versu...

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...

Within the joint Russian-Austrian monitoring programme “REFCOND_VOLGA (2006 – 20XX)”, monitoring sites were established in the headwaters of the Volga (Tver Region). River Tudovka, a right tributary to the Volga River, was included within this monitoring programme as its catchment is partly protected and has only few anthropogenic activities. The m...

Environmental studies on fish require measurements of highly turbulent flows in both the laboratory and in the field. A fish-shaped bioinspired flow measuring device is applied in conjunction with data processing workflow which leverages the interactions between the body and the surrounding flow field for velocity estimation in turbulent flows. Our...

Underwater vehicles require accurate speedometry relative to local flow conditions to perform many tasks within the aquatic environment. This paper presents preliminary results of a differential pressure sensing system using an extension of the Pitot equation capable of providing instantaneous flow speed estimation, including yaw angles from ±45º....

Ecohydraulic studies rely on observations of fish behavior with hydrodynamic measurements. Most commonly, observed fish locations are compared with maps of the bulk flow velocity and depth. Fish use their lateral line to sense hydrodynamic interactions mediated by body-oriented spatial gradients. To improve studies on fish an artificial lateral lin...

We introduce the lateral line probe (LLP) as a measurement device for natural flows. Hydraulic surveys in rivers and hydraulic structures are currently based on time-averaged velocity measurements using propellers or acoustic Doppler devices. The long-term goal is thus to develop a sensor system, which includes spatial gradients of the flow field a...

Natural flows are a complex amalgam of velocity, pressure, and vorticity, which often cannot be directly measured or simulated due to their physical interdependence and scaling. Ecohydraulic investigations require not only an accurate description of the natural flow, but must also consider the fluid-body interactions between the indicator organism...