Abstract:
The freshwater ecosystem performs numerous environmental functions, including nutrient recycling, flood attenuation, and habitat for aquatic flora and fauna. In 2015, the United Nations established the sustainable development goal 14(SDG-14), which focuses on developing a sustainable and conservative ecosystem to maintain habitat richness and diversity in the ocean and the river system. The breeding, growth, and survival of the aquatic species residing in an ecosystem are primarily governed by the hydrological changes, hydrodynamic variables, and the substrate cover in the flow domain. The required ecological flow for developing a sustainable ecosystem, flow regulations due to dams and barrages, and aquatic vegetation such as shrubs, mangroves, or even macrophytes modify the flow characteristics and affect habitat
richness. The capability of the hydrodynamic models to mimic the complex river dynamics under the stochastic environments led to its application in the field of aquatic ecology. The numerical models solve the governing conservations laws and compute the flow parameters under diverse situations. For instance, at different releases from the dams and the barrages, in vegetated channels having varying roughness, and to evaluate the underwater characteristics like habitat suitability for different aquatic flora and fauna in freshwater environments
