An Environmental Operation of Reservoirs through Linking Ecological Storage Model and Evolutionary Optimization

This study proposes an ecological reservoir operation by linking ecological model and optimization model of reservoir. A remote sensing based ecological model was developed in which water temperature and total dissolved solids were simulated in the surface layer of reservoir. Moreover, ecological suitability maps were generated by a fuzzy inference system in which water temperature and total dissolved solids were inputs and normalized suitability was output. An ecological reservoir operation model was developed consistent with the ecological model to minimize ecological suitability loss of the reservoir as well as water supply loss. Moreover, a non-ecological operation was developed to minimize water supply loss only. Reliability and vulnerability indices and average habitat suitability in the reservoir were applied to measure the performance of the optimization model. Results indicated that reliability of water supply is reduced 6% due to using ecological operation model of the reservoir. Furthermore, vulnerability of water supply is increased more than 14% using the ecological operation. In contrast, the average habitat suitability of the reservoir is increased more than 0.35 by ecological operation which means it is remarkably effective on mitigating ecological impacts. Based on case study results, applying ecological operation of the reservoir is necessary to mitigate the ecological impacts of the reservoir on the ecological sustainability of reservoirs as well as downstream. The proposed method is able to balance the habitat requirements and humans’ needs