Growing our impact by cooperation

Part of the AMBER team have met members of the FitHydro team to discuss cooperation between the two projects. Whilst the AMBER project is mapping all barriers in European rivers, analysing the impacts and developing tools for improvement, FitHydro is developing fish friendly technologies for hydropower. The findings of both projects can strengthen each other. The discussion of this meeting in Portugal focussed first on how to integrate experiences of field projects. How to use information from drones, from Barrier Tracker, etc.? Lessons learnt of both projects will be shared via wiki and/or a manual. Another subject of joint interest concerns sedimentation. Also the issue of E-flows was discussed, noting that it is hard to identify a definition of that term that is broadly shared (it was suggested to talk about environmental flows instead of E-flows). There is an increasing trend of using deep learning / big data when analysing and modelling environmental flows, locations and impacts of barriers, etc. All exiting developments. Carlos Garcia de Leaniz, leading the AMBER project: “There is clearly a click between the people of both projects, I would not be surprised if such cooperation might lead to new research or projects in future. That’s a good thing because there is still a lot that can be improved in European waters.” Author: Arjan Berkhuysen