MesoHABSIM is a planning tool for the sustainable management of running waters that is necessary for the effective development of Green Infrastructure planning. This physical habitat simulation model describes the utility of instream habitat conditions for aquatic fauna, allowing the user to simulate a change in habitat quality and quantity in response to alterations of flows or river morphology through human use of rivers. The accompanying Sim-Stream software integrates field collected data with biologic observations or literature based data, and performs the calculations necessary to quantitatively evaluate the impact of human actions on the fauna. These actions include: water withdrawals, channel shipping effects, dam removal/construction, and climate change scenarios. Sim-Stream includes multiple reporting options such as community habitat rating curves, time series charts, scenario comparison, ACTograms, and Habitat Meters, thus providing the manager with comprehensive tools for interpretation and decision-making.
The MesoHABSIM courses have been already been offered and well received in New Zealand, Canada, Ecuador, Spain, and the USA.
For more information on MesoHABSIM go to http://www.MesoHABSIM.org