Abundance and survival of young-of-the-year fish at the floodplains of the lower river Rhine : assessing spawning and nursery quality

Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch executive agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water management, is busy with increasing the ecological quality of the Dutch large rivers. An important part of this is improving the spawning and nursery function of floodplains with restoration measures (KRW maatregelen), an example of this is the excavation of floodplain channels. Unfortunately, this does not yet seem to have the desired effect on the recruitment of adult fish in the rivers. The task was to find out where the problem lies. Specifically by looking at and bringing the dynamics of the young-of-the year fish densities at the floodplain waterbodies of the Dutch Rhine branches in perspective.