Barrier Validation
By Swansea University
At Swansea University we’ve been validating the AMBER barrier atlas on 100 km of Welsh rivers. These surveys were conducted by Peter Jones and Josh Jones. These walk-overs included the Taff, Afan, Tawe, Tywi and Teifi rivers setting off from Cardiff, Port Talbot, Pontardawe, Llangadog and Cardigan. Eighty-seven barriers were observed on the Afan out of a total 124 barriers across the five rivers. This was owing to the multiple steps, akin to rock ramps, in quick succession found near the headwaters, whose purpose was to stabilise the river channel to protect adjacent reed bed filtration system (pictured below) which clean polluted water from historically mining sites found throughout South Wales. On an initial inspection the AMBER atlas included all the larger weirs and dams encountered over the five days. Only the smaller rock ramps, of which there were many, were missing from the AMBER barrier atlas. This is encouraging as these smaller barriers will pose little challenge to the movement of fish and other organisms living in these rivers and their effects will mainly be felt in periods of low flow.
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