Habitat quality and biological community responses to innovative hydropower plant installations at transverse in-stream structures

Ecological assessments of the effects of hydropower plants (HPPs) are often limited to aspects of entrainment, mortality, injuries, and passage of fish, whereas the effects on riverine habitats and biological communities in proximity to these structures are hardly documented.
In this study, aquatic communities comprising fish, macroinvertebrates, macrophytes, and periphyton as well as physical and hydromorphological parameters were investigated in upstream and downstream river sections at five transverse structures at different seasons before and after the installation of an innovative HPP.
At all study sites, significant differences in the aquatic community composition between the assessed upstream and downstream sections were found after HPP construction, indicating distinct serial discontinuity.
Raising the damming target at the sites Großweil and Au deteriorated the habitat conditions in the upstream area close to the weir and presumably influenced in particular the macroinvertebra..., , , # Habitat quality and biological community responses to innovative hydropower plant installations at transverse in-stream structures

The dataset comprises biotic (fish, macroinvertebrates, macrophytes, and periphyton) and abiotic data (physical and hydromorphological parameters) that were recorded in upstream and downstream river sections at five transverse structures at different seasons before and after the installation of an innovative hydropower plant.

## Description of the data and file structure

The data are organised in cross tables, with the rows indicating the sampling sites and the sampling time and the columns indicating the taxa detected (biotic data) or the parameters measured (abiotic data). Column headers contain units for abiotic data.

Abbreviations for abiotic parameters:

* DO = dissolved oxygen
* OW = open water
* INT = interstitial zone
* T = water temperature
* EC = electric conductivity
* EH = redox potential
* CV = current velocity
* depth = ...