Image Driven Hydrological Components Based Fish Habitability Modeling in Riparian Wetlands Triggered by Damming

Assessing fish habitability in pursuance of damming for some selected fishes in wetland of Indo-Bangladesh barind tract using hydrological ingredients like hydro-period, water depth, and water presence consistency is major focus of the present study. Rule based decision tree modeling has been applied for integrating aforesaid hydrological parameters to find out habitat suitability for some selected fishes like carp fishes, shrimps, tilapia and cat fishes both for pre-dam and post-dam periods. From this work it is highlighted that damming has accelerated the rate of wetland deterioration in forms of hydrological flow alteration i.e. inconsistency in water presence has increased, hydro-duration became shortened and water depth has attenuated. From the model it is very clear that a small proportion area was considered to be good fish habitat (16.54–39.90%) in pre-dam period, but after damming almost all parts have become least suitable for fish habitability. Field survey has confirmed that fishing quantity, growing rate of fishes was higher in pre-dam situation but it is reduced gradually during post-dam period. Image driven hydrological parameters to model fish habitability is a new approach but important parameters like food availability, water quality parameters could also be incorporated in order to get better result.