Hydropeaking impact on the vertical connectivity, effects on stonefly stygophilous species

Shape is one of the significant features of Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR). This paper proposes a strong and successful shape feature, which is based on a set of orthogonal complex moments of images known as Zernike moments. For shape classification Zernike moment (ZM) is the dominant solution. The radial polynomial of Zernike moment produces the number of concentric circles based on the order. As the order increases number of circles will increases, due to this the local information of an image will be ignored. In this paper, we introduced a novel method for radial polynomial where local information of an image given importance. We succeeded to extract the local features and shape features at very a low order of polynomial compared to the state of traditional ZM.The proposed method gives an advantage of a lower order, less complex, and lower dimension feature vector.For more similar images we find that simple  Euclidian distance approximately zero. Proposed method tested on a MPEG-7 CE-1 shape database, Coil-100 databases. Experiments demonstrated that it is outperforming in identifying the shape of an object in the image  and reduced the retrieving time and complexity of calculations

Impact of hydropeaking on hyporheic invertebrates in an Alpine stream (Trentino, Italy)

The impact of repeated hydropeaking events was assessed in the Alpine stream Noce Bianco (Trentino, NE Italy). Three stations were selected, one upstream and two at 0.25 km and 6 km downstream from a hydropower plant which causes 7-fold discharge increases. We collected hyporheic invertebrates for two years. Taxa diversity and abundance were reduced in the impacted sites, especially affecting the stygobites, which were significantly less abundant at the impacted sites, whereas stygoxene invertebrates increased exponentially. Repeated hydropeaking events alter the physical-chemical characteristics of the hyporheic habitat, resulting in the recorded faunistic pattern. The deposition of the fine sediment transported by the turbinated water downstream of the power plant and the absence of natural peak floods which remove fine sediments, probably cause a reduction of the interstitial space interstitial habitat available to stygobitic taxa. Surface water natural thermal regime is altered by the hypolimnetic discharges, and such alterations propagate into the hyporheic, affecting the stenothermic taxa. Some benthic taxa used the hyporheic habitat as a refuge to avoid catastrophic drift during hydropower production operation. The main trophic roles represented in the hyporheic assemblages do not support an important role for biological interactions such as predation in determining the fine-scale patchiness of the hyporheos

Assessment of hydropeaking-induced alterations of benthic communities in experimental flumes

The relationships between discharge alterations due to the intermittent discharge of turbinated water downstream of hydropower plants (hydropeaking) and drift of zoobenthos were investigated through the simulation of two different flow increases in artificial flumes, i.e. one similar to natural high-flow events (stepwise increase in discharge 2x), and one to hydropeaking (abrupt increase in discharge 7x). The effects on zoobenthos detected with the artificial flumes were compared with those of a field study of an hydropeaking wave in an alpine stream, in order to assess the validity of the artificial flumes to simulate natural streams in hydraulic manipulation experiments. The research was conducted in the Adige River catchment. The experimental structure of five steel channels with adjustable discharge and slope is located along the Fersina Stream. The hydropeaking wave was studied in natural conditions in the Noce Stream, 0.25 km downstream of Cogolo-Pont hydropower plant. Results showed a strong increase in drift in response to discharge increases; the temporal trend and absolute value of drift in the station downstream of the plant were similar to those of the artificial channels, especially of the channel with abrupt discharge. Taxa responded differently according to their levels of adaptation to flow increases. Differences in drift rates between artificial and natural conditions were probably due to the daily timing of hydropeaking in the Noce Stream, which reduce the consistence of the benthic community. The study also confirms the validity of the artificial flumes to manipulate discharge in order to develop guidelines for an eco-sustainable management of hydropeaking-impacted alpine stream