Impact and prospects of water conservation on fish habitat and advances of ecobiology operation in Yangtze River, China: A review

Abstract

Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia, provides 40 percent of freshwater in China and plays an important role in ecological biodiversity. However, this ecosystem has been deteriorated by the continuously construction of reservoirs and hydropower stations. Many investigations have been carried for the biodiversity, hydrological indicators, and species distribution along Yangtze River caused by dam construction. As a result, the ecological operation has been gradually applied to mitigate the negative effects of water conservancy projects. In order to well know recent advances in the study of fish habitat in the Yangtze River Basin, 424 original papers published from 2000 to 2020 using bibliometrics were compiled in this research to analyze the developing trends including topics, data, and research status. The results of literature statistics showed that the related research fields on the effects of the reservoir on hydrological indicators mainly focused on negative impact caused by hydrological changes, water temperature effect, and sediment variation. In the studies on the habitats of fish, the four major Chinese carps and Chinese sturgeon were the main objects of concern, in which multi-objective joint operation, cascade reservoir operation, and model coupling have been widely adapted.