Journal
SUSTAINABILITY
Volume 8, Issue 10, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/su8100972
Keywords
floating treatment wetland; sustainable stormwater management; stormwater detention pond; nitrogen removal; water quality; wetland plant biomass; The Rain Project
Funding
- University Life, the College of Science Dean's Office, Biology and Environmental Science and Policy departments, at GMU
- Mason 4-VA Innovation Grant
- OSCAR undergraduate research
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Nitrogen is widely recognized as a chronic urban stormwater pollutant. In the United States, wet retention ponds have become widely used to treat urban runoff for quantity and quality. While wet ponds typically function well for the removal of sediments, nitrogen removal, performance can be inconsistent due to poor design and/or lack of maintenance. Retrofitting ponds to improve their nitrogen capture performance, however, is often expensive. By hydroponically growing macrophytes on wet ponds, floating treatment wetlands (FTW) may provide a cheap, sustainable means of improving nitrogen removal efficiency of aging stormwater ponds. Few studies have been performed on the effectiveness real-world stormwater systems, however. In this study, we investigated the nitrogen and sediment capture performance of a 50m(2) floating treatment wetland deployed for 137 days on a stormwater wet pond located within an urban university campus near Washington, D. C. A total of 2684 g of biomass was produced, 3100 g of sediment captured, and 191 g of nitrogen removed from the pond. Although biomass production was relatively low (53 g/m(2)), we found that nitrogen uptake by the plants (0.009 g/m(2)/day) was comparable to contemporary FTW studies.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available