Humans have fragmented European water bodies with artificial barriers such as dams and weirs for centuries, as a means of ensuring water supplies, generating energy, facilitating navigation, and controlling flooding. Such human-made barriers reduce the ecological connectivity of a water body, impeding the flows of water, nutrients and sediment, create obstructions for species movement (particularly migratory species), often alter the quantity, quality and timing of river flows, both upstream and downstream, and can impact surrounding riparian zones and flood plains (Freshwater Information System, 2019).
There are different types of barriers, including dams, sluices, weirs, culverts, fords and ramp-bed sills and the extent differs to which these are recorded in the different national river assessment systems across Europe.
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