Effect of dam construction on the habitat suitability indices of Barbus cyri in the Taleghan River

Changes in river ecosystem conditions, including dam construction, provide new ecological conditions for the inhabitants of these ecosystems that must adapt to survive. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of Taleghan Dam on the suitability indices of Barbus cyri based on the Kernel smoothing method during 2018-2019. The environmental factors, including water depth, velocity, river width, pH, temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), slope, elevation, bedrock diameter, and the number of rocks larger than 15 cm are measured and recorded. The Root-mean-square deviation related to bandwidth from 1 to 1000 was examined for each environmental factor. The results showed that increasing elevation, river width, velocity, EC, and TDS decrease the suitability of the studied species, and the suitability increased by increasing depth, slope, temperature, and pH. Some factors, including depth, river width and water temperature had many changes. In conclusion, the downstream conditions of the dam were better in the habitat suitability of Barbus cyri than the upstream region.