THE EFFECTS OF HYDRAULIC CONSTRUCTIONS ON KOR RIVER MESOHABITAT ALTERATION IN IRAN

Ali Torabi Haghighi, University of Oulu, Finland
Pouyan Keshtkaran, Islamic Azad University, Iran
Bjorn Klove, University of Oulu, Finland

Abstract

Kor River is one of the two big rivers that exist in Fars province in South of Iran. The two big storage dams (Doroudzan1972 & Mollasadra 2006) built on this river shows how important the river is. This river is a major mesohabitat for more than 35 types of fish and it provides hydro morphological condition to assess the ecological stability for its inhabitants. Due to hydraulic constructions, changes in the quality and quantity of water and mesohabitat is predictable. In this paper, for different amount of discharges, Kor river cross sections in the two sides of the hydraulic structure (upstream and downstream of Doroudzan dam) are classified into 7 different type as riffles, fast run, run, pool, back water, shallow water and dry area. River classification was done by using the result of river Analyses modeling (Hec- Ras) in Mesohabitat Evaluation model (MEM) based on changing in bed shear stress, velocity and depth of water. The river conditions were evaluated for two scenarios, with and without Doroudzan dam. This study showed how the bed river morphology and mesohabitat conditions altered due to the hydraulic constructions built across the river. The result of this paper can be useful for finding suitable structures for Kor river restoration and assess the environmental flow.