The river maintenance works currently conducted in Poland are in fact very similar to river channelization, which causes degradation of the environment over thousands of kilometers of  Polish rivers. River restoration, if commenced, is generally conducted  in the schematic way, which usually does not give satisfactory results.

In order to illustrate the changes in the aquatic environment, resulting from river maintenance measures, habitat simulation model MesoHABSIM was applied. A low-impact, 1300 m long section of a Świder River was  selected and  mapped at the low medium flow. With help of conditional habitat suitability criteria for typical native fish species grouped in habitat use guilds. Unsuitable, suitable and optimal habitats were identified. Subsequently typical river maintenance and restoration measures were simulated and habitat was evaluated in the same fashion.  The results have shown dramatic habitat degradation  in both cases. Furthermore we developed a scheme of the most effective restoration measures to be applied on the Świder River.