Abiotic-biotic method of water treatment in a shore of lake - A new strategy for protection of urban lakes

The article presents a novel, practical, sustainable and multi-purpose conceptual method for urban lakes water treatment. It is based on the separation of the inflowing water from the lake's main body with an impermeable barrier and a construction of enhanced littoral zone. The impermeable barrier alongside the shoreline creates a new littoral zone between the land and the lake water. Inflowing water as well as nutrient-rich seepage water from a direct catchment will be pretreated in a specially constructed biotic and abiotic zones. The naturally formed community of macrophytes in the littoral zone ensures biological pretreatment. The remaining phosphorus load will be eliminated in the abiotic part of the system composed of natural, cost-efficient and easily accessible sorption material. Based on nutrients budget calculated for a few urban lakes, we estimate that the diversion of the main nutrient-rich river inflow and the cutoff of the littoral zone will reduce a load of nitrogen and phosphorus by more than 80% and 90% respectively. (C) 2018 European Regional Centre for Ecohydrology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.