Sustainable Water Management - Treatment Wetlands Design

Nature-based solutions like constructed/treatment wetlands, can play an essential role for the water pollution control at urban scale and for reducing the flooding risk while providing positive effects on biodiversity, social acceptance and economics.

Ecosystems

Rivers and lakes
Sparsely vegetated land
Urban
Wetlands

Implementation

Ecosystem approach
Habitat creation
Payment for ecosystem services
Procurement
Reporting

Methods

Cost-benefit analysis
Ecosystem assessment
Impact assessment
Life cycle analysis
Modelling
Multi-criteria decision analysis/decision-support tools
Scenario development
Spread-sheet methods

Regions

Atlantic
Alpine
Continental
Northern
Southern

Topics

Biodiversity
Carbon sequestration
Climate change
Ecosystem services
Green infrastructure
Nature-based solutions
Sustainability
Urbanisation

Uses of this product

Application of constructed wetlands (rebuilt natural systems) for wastewater treatment represents by now a diffused solution in many parts of the world. Many research activities have been realized by universities and agencies in UK, Denmark, Germany, USA, Austria, France, Italy, etc.: since 25 years ago they have studied pilot and real scale plants and determined models and process kinetics, utilizing data from monitoring that take in account climatic condition of the area, characteristic of wastewater and technical solutions implemented. Constructed wetlands offer a great grade of control, allowing a precise valuation of their efficiency based on the knowledge of type of substrate, vegetative typologies and hydraulic operational parameters. In these systems pollutants are removed by a combination of chemical, physical an biological processes, like sedimentation, precipitation, adsorbing, assimilation by plants and microbial activity.

Nature-based system, as constructed wetlands inserted in ecosystems, can provide a valuable alternative for the following applications:

WASTEWATER TYPOLOGY


	civii
SECONDARY AND TERTIARY	mixed
TREATMENTS (or post-treatments)	industrial
	landfill leachate
	runoff of roads, highways and agricultural fields

Product requirements

Water pollution issues, water bodies contamination
Land availability for the adoption of extensive nature-based systems for water pollution control
Availability of construction material (water-proofing liners or clay, appropriate gravel and sand)

Advantages

Lowest operational costs
Robust treatment capacities with relevant effects also for micropollutants control and removal
Creation of side effects, along the two main ones (water quality improvement, flooding risk reduction), as biodiversity increase, leasure, increased social acceptance, microclimate, CO2 temporary storage

Links

Case studies

Contact details

Dr Fabio Masi
fmasi@iridra.com
mob +39 335 5728893
off +39 055 470729
skype fabio_masi

Sustainable Water Management - Treatment Wetlands Design

Associated Oppla members