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Influence of irrigation infrastructures and water quality on fish assemblages in Lake Tana tributaries, north-west Ethiopia

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Abstract

Lake Tana is one of East Africa’s largest freshwater bodies, yet many of its fishes are migratory and utilize in-flowing tributaries as critical spawning habitat. However, factors such as expanding water resources developments and sand mining along these rivers and streams may disrupt this ecosystem function. We monitored juvenile and adult fish abundance and water quality across five lake tributaries from August 2014 to April 2015 to examine how irrigation schemes and water quality affect assemblage and population structure. Adult assemblages were dominated by Labeobarbus cyprinids and varied between tributaries, albeit without separation by irrigation development or sand mining. Overall, adult abundances of the dominant migratory Labeobarbus species were four-fold higher below the Shini River irrigation weir than upstream. Contrastingly, juvenile abundances were often significantly higher above these structures. Juvenile abundances decreased on average by 46% along the first 1000 m of two irrigation canals, suggesting poor habitat suitability or high mortalities from water withdrawals. Water quality varied more between rivers than sampling times, but without any separation of tributaries by irrigation or sand mining. Conductivity and turbidity-related parameters had the highest correlation with adult assemblage structure and individual species abundances. These findings indicate that Lake Tana tributaries must be managed on a case by case basis, with more focus given to mechanisms allowing fish to bypass irrigation developments and the direct assessment of fish populations between sand mining and other sites.

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All data are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank The Rufford Foundation (Grant No. 10137-2) and the Blue Nile Water Institute at Bahir Dar University for their financial support of this study. The Bahir Dar Fish and Other Aquatic Life Research Center loaned us sampling gears, and we especially thank B. Hailu for assistance in the field and with fish species identification. Constructive feedback from F. Taddese helped improve the manuscript prior to submission.

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Funding

Financial support was provided by The Rufford Foundation (Grant No. 10137–2 to AG) and the Blue Nile Water Institute at Bahir Dar University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, University of Gondar, P.O. Box 196, Gondar, Ethiopia

    Gizachew Teshome

  2. Department of Zoological Sciences, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 1176, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Gizachew Teshome & Abebe Getahun

  3. Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, School of Fisheries and Wildlife, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Bahir Dar University, P.O. Box 79, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

    Minwyelet Mingist

  4. Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, Dk 5230, Odense-M, Denmark

    Glenn Wilson

  5. Department of Biology, College of Science, Bahir Dar University, P.O. Box 79, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

    Wassie Anteneh

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  1. Gizachew Teshome
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  2. Abebe Getahun
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  3. Minwyelet Mingist
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  4. Glenn Wilson
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  5. Wassie Anteneh
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Contributions

GT, AG, MM and WA conceived and designed the study, which was undertaken with funding obtained by AG. GT performed the fieldwork, and GW analysed the data. GT and GW wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Gizachew Teshome.

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All sampling was undertaken in accordance with animal ethics approval from Bahir Dar University’s Animal Ethics and Experimentation Committee.

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This manuscript is original work carried out by the authors. This work has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests, personal relationships or conflicts of interest that could have appeared to influence the subject matter or materials reported in this paper.

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Teshome, G., Getahun, A., Mingist, M. et al. Influence of irrigation infrastructures and water quality on fish assemblages in Lake Tana tributaries, north-west Ethiopia. Environ Biol Fish 104, 653–673 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-021-01101-y

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