Datasets associated to the report titled 'Shore Channel Sedimentary Processes, Passability by Migrating Fish and Habitat Suitability'.

Summary: The current study consists of three parts (1) an analysis of the sedimentary processes in the shore channels along the longitudinal dams in the River Waal (LTDs), (2) an assessment of the upstream passability of the shore channel inflows by migratory fish species, and (3) an analysis of the habitat suitability of the shore channels for fish, macroinvertebrates and macrophytes. For the first analysis, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), multibeam echosounder (MBES), and aerial photographs datasets were used to examine geomorphological processes (erosion and deposition), calculate the retreat rate of eroding banklines, and analyze the development of shoreline length over time in the mesohabitats of shore channels and reference study areas. The second part of the analysis focused on the use of acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) datasets to produce 3D lattices of flow velocity in the inflow openings of shore channels at high river discharge. This was combined with data and linear relations from scientific literature on the swimming performance of relevant migratory fish species in the Rhine. The third part consisted in assessing the habitat suitability of the shore channel with the data on substrate, water depth and flow velocity collected in 2020. This was done using the species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) available in the scientific literature for fish, macroinvertebrates and macrophytes occurring in the Rhine. The produced substrate maps of May 2020 were compared with substrate maps of April 2019. The main conclusions of the studies are: 1. The shore channels of the LTDs showed a pattern of aggradation of the bed towards the dams and degradation towards the bank. From 2015 to 2019 there was net sediment loss in all three shore channels with Wamel having the least and Dreumel the most. Compared to the groyne field areas the Wamel shore channel is almost stable. The eroding banklines had a retreat rate of 1.6 m/y and the sand dominated mesohabitats in the shore channels had longer shorelines. 2. Larger juveniles (TL = 70 mm) of fish species occurring in the Rhine passed some of the study sites during high discharge conditions and performed better during average discharge conditions. Adult fish had no problems passing the inflow opening, with the exception of Gasterosteus aculeatus aculeatus. Fish species were able to pass all 10 3D lattices produced once they reached a minimum TL of about 165 mm. The inflow of the Ophemert shore channel was the least passable of the LTDs. 3. The habitats in the center and bank lines of the shore channels were most suitable for all species groups studied because of substrate heterogeneity, shallow water and relatively low flow velocities. All three shore channels had more mixed substrate type in 2020 than in 2019.

The dataset includes:

1. Sedimentary Processes.zip includes: a. ErosionDeposition.zip: file with the GeoTIFF files of the erosion and deposition analysis results for all of the periods (files name: SubtractionYear1_Year2Location_Channel or vegetated bank(VegBank).tif; coordinate system: Amersfoort/RD New; opens with ArcGIS or QGIS). b. ErodedBankline.zip: file with the manually digitized bankline shapefiles per year (file name: Location_Year.shp; coordinate system: Amersfoort/RD New; opens with ArcGIS or QGIS). c. ShorelineLength.zip: file with all of the shoreline length analysis shapefiles (file name: MonthYear_Mesohabitats_NoStony if boulder areas are not included. shp; coordinate system: Amersfoort/RD New; opens with ArcGIS or QGIS). d. DTMs.zip: file with the GeoTIFF files (files name: Location_rYear_NN (gridding method Natural Neighbor).tif; coordinate system: Amersfoort/RD New; opens with ArcGIS or QGIS) of the combined LiDAR and MBES DTMs produced.

2. Passability.zip includes: a. Passability_Lattices_FishSpecies.zip: file containing the images (.png; opens with Photos) of the 3D lattices of the final swimming speed for all of the fish species assessed. b. FlowVelocity.zip: file containing the images (.png; opens with Photos) of the 3D lattices of the flow velocities per year and location assessed.

3. FINAL_Rasters.zip: file containing the GeoTIFF files (.tif; reference coordinate system: WGS84; opens with ArcGIS or QGIS) for the water depth (Depth_Clipped_WGS84_March2020 folder), flow velocity (Flow Velocity_Clipped_WGS84) and substrate types for all of the study sites. Substrate files have the Potentially Occurring Fraction of EPT macroinvertebrates (Substrate_EPTs_WGS84 folder) or mussels (Substrate_Mussels_WGS84 folder) as cell values.

4. SubstrateClassification.zip: file with all of the substrate classification polygon shapefiles (reference coordinate system: WGS84; opens with ArcGIS or QGIS).