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Developing Cost-Effective Design Guidelines for Fish-Friendly Box Culverts, with a Focus on Small Fish

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Abstract

Low-level river crossings can have negative impacts on freshwater ecosystems, including blocking upstream fish passage. In order to restore upstream fish passage in culverts, we developed physically-based design methods to yield cost-effective culvert structures in order to maintain or restore waterway connectivity for a range of small-bodied fish species. New guidelines are proposed for fish-friendly multi-cell box culvert designs based upon two basic concepts: (1) the culvert design is optimised for fish passage for small to medium water discharges, and for flood capacity for larger discharges, and (2) low-velocity zones in the culvert barrel are defined in terms of a percentage of the wetted flow area where the local longitudinal velocity component is less than a characteristic fish speed linked to swimming performances of targeted fish species. This approach is novel and relies upon an accurate physically-based knowledge of the entire velocity field in the barrel, specifically the longitudinal velocity map, because fish tend to target low-velocity zone (LVZ) boundaries. The influence of the relative discharge threshold Q1/Qdes, characteristic fish swimming speed Ufish, and percentage of flow area on the size of box culvert structures was assessed. The results showed that the increase in culvert size and cost might become significant for a smooth culvert barrel with Ufish < 0.3 m/s and Q1/Qdes > 0.3, when providing 15% flow area with 0 < Vx < Ufish. Similar trends were seen for culvert barrel with recessed cell(s).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Professor Colin J. APELT (The University of Queensland, Australia), Dr Gangfu ZHANG (WSP Brisbane, Australia), and Professor Daniel BUNG (FH Aachen University of Applied Science, Germany) for valuable comments. Further comments from discussions with a number of professional engineers and biologists were considered.

Funding

The financial support of Australian Research Council (Grant LP140100225) is acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Xinqian Leng & Hubert Chanson

  2. New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, 1243 Bruxner Highway, Wollongbar, NSW, 2477, Australia

    Matthews Gordos & Marcus Riches

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  1. Xinqian Leng
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  2. Hubert Chanson
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  3. Matthews Gordos
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  4. Marcus Riches
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Correspondence to Hubert Chanson.

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Leng, X., Chanson, H., Gordos, M. et al. Developing Cost-Effective Design Guidelines for Fish-Friendly Box Culverts, with a Focus on Small Fish. Environmental Management 63, 747–758 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-019-01167-6

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