Abstract | Riverine ecosystem protection requires the maintenance of natural flow and sediment regimes downstream from dams. In reservoir management schedules this requirement should be integrated with sedimentation control and human water supply. However, traditional eco-friendly reservoir operating methods have usually only considered the natural flow regime. This paper seeks to develop a reservoir operating method that accounts for both the natural flow and sediment regimes as well as optimizing the water supply allocations. Herein, reservoir water level (RWL), sediment-occupied ratio of reservoir volume (SOR) and rate of change of SOR (RCSOR) are adopted as three triggers of a drawdown-flushing-based sediment management policy. Two different groups of reservoir operating rule curves (RORCs) are designed for sediment-flushing and non-sediment-flushing years, and the three triggers, RWL, SOR and RCSOR, are used to change the “static” RORCs to “dynamic” ones. The approach is applied to the Wangkuai Reservoir, China to test its effectiveness. This shows that the approach can improve the flexibility of reservoir operators to balance the reservoir management, water supply management and the flow and sediment needs of the downstream riverine ecosystem. |
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