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Advances in Engineered Wetlands for Treating Agricultural Runoff
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Advances in Engineered Wetlands for Treating Agricultural Runoff

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Quality and Contamination".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2023) | Viewed by 3899

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Robert H. Kadlec

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Wetland Management Services, Chelsea, MI, USA
Interests: constructed wetlands; pollution control; nutrients; sediments; marsh hydraulics
Dr. Karin S. Tonderski

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
Interests: environmental science; nutrient recycling; constructed wetlands

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Modern agriculture produces high yields of crops that are necessary for life, but it also produces runoff that may have large impacts on the receiving waterbodies. This non-point discharge contains nutrients, often dominated by nitrogen (N), in the form of nitrate, and phosphorus (P), along with suspended solids. The runoff also often contains pesticide residues, used to prevent insect damage and control weeds. Efforts are well under way to prevent damage to the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Erie, the Baltic Sea, and other sensitive receiving waterbodies. However, there remains a further critical need to prevent contaminants from reaching receiving waters, which can be partly achieved by best management practices. End-of-field buffer systems can provide major reductions, and these prominently include constructed wetlands (CWs).

It has been thirty years since the pioneering work of the US Department of Agriculture (Wengrzynek and Terrell, 1990) and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (Arheimer and Wittgren, 1994) regarding CWs for treating agricultural runoff. Hundreds of wetlands for runoff control have been created. These wetlands vary greatly depending on the crop and the site conditions. In the Yakima Valley of Washington State, runoff is from corn, wheat, peppers, cherries, peaches, mint, and grapes. In the midwestern US, corn and wheat dominate the landscape. In Florida, we find vast sugarcane fields. The same holds for all other regions of our planet. The result has been a wide variety of “recipes” for implementing wetland buffers. Despite this diversity, there is an underlying commonality of wetland biogeochemistry.

Although wetlands are already being successfully implemented in many locations, there is plenty of room for more science and engineering to increase wetland effectiveness. Wetlands are a “low tech” remedy, but they can be made more effective if the science is better understood.

The goal of this Special Issue is to present current advances in the knowledge base for wetland systems intended to control nutrients, solids, and pesticides in agricultural runoff.

Prof. Dr. Robert H. Kadlec
Dr. Karin S. Tonderski
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • constructed wetlands
  • agricultural runoff
  • nitrogen
  • phosphorus
  • sediments
  • pesticides
  • ecological engineering

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 4882 KiB  
Article
‘Dual Purpose’ Surface Flow Constructed Treatment Wetlands Support Native Biodiversity in Intensified Agricultural Landscapes
by Brandon C. Goeller, James P. S. Sukias, Simon J. R. Woodward and Beverley R. Clarkson
Water 2023, 15(14), 2526; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15142526 - 10 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1240
Abstract
In agricultural landscapes, free-water surface flow wetlands (FWS) are constructed mainly to improve water quality; however, their contribution to biodiversity conservation is increasingly recognised. To inform biodiversity management in FWS treating agricultural runoff, we surveyed the vegetation and fauna assemblages in five established [...] Read more.
In agricultural landscapes, free-water surface flow wetlands (FWS) are constructed mainly to improve water quality; however, their contribution to biodiversity conservation is increasingly recognised. To inform biodiversity management in FWS treating agricultural runoff, we surveyed the vegetation and fauna assemblages in five established FWS in a lowland, pastoral landscape in the central North Island, New Zealand. The FWS had been established for between 3 and 19 years, planted with a restricted range of native plant species, and fenced to exclude livestock access. Larger wetlands hosted significantly more plant and mammal species. However, other than wetland size, we found few other significant relationships between wetland habitat, landscape characteristics, and measures of biodiversity (total species, proportion of native species, number of wetland specialists, or threatened species). We recorded one-hundred and thirteen plant, twenty bird, five mammal, eighty-five terrestrial invertebrates, forty-seven aquatic invertebrates, six fish, and two amphibian species inhabiting the FWS. Native species comprised 96% of the total aquatic invertebrate fauna identified. For other taxa, native flora and fauna accounted for half or less than half of all species identified: 53% terrestrial invertebrates, 50% fish, 45% birds, 32% plants, and 0% amphibian and mammal species. Few wetland specialists (aquatic or wetland-adapted) or threatened native species were detected, probably reflecting the limited range of wetland plant species in initial plantings and the difficulties native taxa face when colonising new habitat where potential reservoirs of colonist species are also depauperate or too distant. FWS support native biodiversity, but further enhancements may require active management of exotic and pest species to minimise competition or predation on native species. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Engineered Wetlands for Treating Agricultural Runoff)
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25 pages, 6016 KiB  
Article
Quantifying the Nitrogen-Removal Performance of a Constructed Wetland Dominated by Diffuse Agricultural Groundwater Inflows Using a Linked Catchment–Wetland Model
by Linh Hoang, James P. S. Sukias, Valerio Montemezzani and Chris C. Tanner
Water 2023, 15(9), 1689; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15091689 - 26 Apr 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2330
Abstract
Nitrogen loading from diffuse agricultural sources is a major water-quality problem worldwide. Constructed wetlands have been increasingly used to treat runoff and drainage from agricultural lands. However, the diffuse nature of nitrogen loading from farmlands often makes it challenging to trace flow pathways [...] Read more.
Nitrogen loading from diffuse agricultural sources is a major water-quality problem worldwide. Constructed wetlands have been increasingly used to treat runoff and drainage from agricultural lands. However, the diffuse nature of nitrogen loading from farmlands often makes it challenging to trace flow pathways and measure the direct input loading to wetlands, and assess their nutrient-reduction performance. The Owl Farm wetland, Cambridge, New Zealand, receives inputs mainly from a subsurface drain and groundwater seepage. As it was not possible to directly measure wetland inflows, we used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to estimate and partition the wetland inflow and nitrogen loading from the drain and seepage. A dynamic first-order tanks-in-series wetland model was linked with SWAT to evaluate the wetland capacity for nitrogen removal over a four-year period. The linked catchment–wetland model could simulate flow and nitrate load at the wetland outlet reasonably well with a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.7 and 0.76, respectively, suggesting that it provides a good representation of the hydrological and nitrogen processes in the upland catchment and the constructed wetland. We used two approaches, a mixed measurement-and-modelling-based approach and a process-based modelling approach to estimate the wetland efficiency of nitrogen removal. In both approaches, we found that the percentage load removal for nitrate-N and total N was related exponentially to the wetland outflow rate. Based on the process-based model estimates, the Owl Farm constructed wetland is very effective in removing nitrate-N with annual estimates of 55–80% (average 61%) removal. However, this capacity is very dynamic depending on the inflow from the catchment. The removal efficiency is very high at low flow and reduces when flow increases but is still maintained at around 20–40% during higher-flow periods. However, actual nitrogen-load removal in the wetland is greatest during high-flow periods when input loads are elevated. This study illustrates how a linked catchment–wetland modelling approach can be used to partition and quantify diffuse nitrogen input loads into wetlands from different types of runoff and to evaluate their subsequent reduction rates. The tool is particularly useful for situations where diffuse groundwater inflows, which are difficult to measure, are important nutrient sources. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Engineered Wetlands for Treating Agricultural Runoff)
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