Over a few past decades, some sections of the fifth-order, mountain Czarny Dunajec River, southern Poland, have been considerably modified by channelization or channel incision induced by gravel extraction. As a result, the contemporary river represents a variety of morphologies ranging from single-thread, incised or regulated channel to unmanaged, multi-thread channel. For twelve crosssections with 1 to 4 flow threads, hydromorphological river quality was assessed by four surveyors from the fields of fluvial geomorphology, river engineering and hydrobiology and compared with the abundance and diversity of fish fauna determined by electrofishing. Moreover, the variation in depth, velocity and bed material size was determined for each cross-section on the basis of measurements made at 1 m intervals. Average values of hydromorphological quality for the surveyed cross-sections ranged between 1.08 and 3.96, with the cross-sections with heavily island-braided morphology classified as representing high status (reference) conditions and those located in channelized river sections falling into Class 4. The increase in the number of low-flow channels within a cross-section was associated with increasing variation in depth, velocity and bed material size. Single-thread cross-sections hosted only 2 fish species and 13 specimens caught on average, whereas 3-4 species and 82 specimens on average were ...
