Developing Cost-Effective Design Guidelines for Fish-Friendly Box Culverts, with a Focus on Small Fish.

Low-level river crossings can have negative impacts on freshwater ecosystems, including blocking upstream fish passage. In order to restore upstream fish passage in culverts, we developed physically-based design methods to yield cost-effective culvert structures in order to maintain or restore waterway connectivity for a range of small-bodied fish species. New guidelines are proposed for fish-friendly multi-cell box culvert designs based upon two basic concepts: (1) the culvert design is optimised for fish passage for small to medium water discharges, and for flood capacity for larger discharges, and (2) low-velocity zones in the culvert barrel are defined in terms of a percentage of the wetted flow area where the local longitudinal velocity component is less than a characteristic fish speed linked to swimming performances of targeted fish species.