Performance of Vegetated Biofilters for Road and Parking Lot Runoff Management

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2019) | Viewed by 13602

Special Issue Editor

Ecole des Ponts ParisTech / Leesu, Paris, France
Interests: urban runoff; pollutants; emissions; loads; management; SUDS; measurement; modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Runoff from trafficked areas (roads, highways, but also parking lots) is a considerable source of diffuse pollution that needs to be controlled. While metal and hydrocarbon contamination has been widely documented, a much wider panel of organic micropollutants (flame retardants, surfactants, plasticizers, antioxidants), whose fate is less documented, must also be considered. Moreover, the extend and nature of the contamination is very traffic dependent and treatment systems need to be adapted to local conditions.

Today, runoff management often relies on diffuse, vegetated systems that are designed to achieve multiple objectives, such as improving water quality but also restoring the natural hydrologic balance, and contributing to the urban amenity. Systems which control pollution by filtering stormwater through a vegetated soil or filter media may be referred to as vegetated biofilters; this category encompases various systems like biofiltration swales, bioretention cells, but also vegetative filter strips and pervious vegetated pavements.

The efficiency of these systems for pollutant load control depends both on their hydrological performance and on the physical and biochemical processes that condition the fate of pollutants. The context of road runoff raises specific issues like effect of de-icing salts, sediment accumulation and maintenance practices.

In this Special Issue we will welcome contributions based on field monitoring of vegetated biofiltration systems and/or modeling work. Column or mesocosm studies may also be considered if experimental conditions are representative of road runoff.

The scope of the Special Issue includes :

  • Methodological frameworks for in-situ performance evaluation;
  • Evaluation of the hydrological and/or water quality performance (especially for less documented organic micropollutants) of systems;
  • Fate of pollutants (degradation, leaching, etc.) on a medium- to long-term scale; analysis of physical, chemical or biological processes involved;
  • Effects of system aging, maintenance practices, vegetation growth, seasonality or biological activity on the temporal variations of performance indicators;
  • Effect of design parameters (filter media characteristics, plant type, system geometry, etc.) on the retention of various pollutants found in road runoff.

Dr. Marie-Christine Gromaire
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Road runoff
  • micropollutants
  • vegetative biofilters
  • hydrologic performance
  • water quality performance
  • physical/chemical/biological processes
  • field study
  • modeling

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 2855 KiB  
Article
Evaluating the Hydrologic Benefits of a Bioswale in Brunswick County, North Carolina (NC), USA
by Rebecca A. Purvis, Ryan J. Winston, William F. Hunt, Brian Lipscomb, Karthik Narayanaswamy, Andrew McDaniel, Matthew S. Lauffer and Susan Libes
Water 2019, 11(6), 1291; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w11061291 - 20 Jun 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 5719
Abstract
Bioswales are a promising stormwater control measure (SCM) for roadway runoff management, but few studies have assessed performance on a field scale. A bioswale is a vegetated channel with underlying engineered media and a perforated underdrain to promote improved hydrologic and water quality [...] Read more.
Bioswales are a promising stormwater control measure (SCM) for roadway runoff management, but few studies have assessed performance on a field scale. A bioswale is a vegetated channel with underlying engineered media and a perforated underdrain to promote improved hydrologic and water quality treatment. A bioswale with a rip-rap lined forebay was constructed along state highway NC 211 in Bolivia, North Carolina, USA, and monitored for 12 months. Thirty-seven of the 39 monitored rain events exfiltrated into underlying soils, resulting in no appreciable overflow or underdrain volume. The bioswale completely exfiltrated a storm event of 86.1 mm. The one event to have underdrain-only flow was 4.8 mm. The largest and third-largest rainfall depth events (82.6 and 146 mm, respectively) had a large percentage (85%) of volume exfiltrated, but also had appreciable overflow and underdrain volumes exiting the bioswale, resulting in no peak flow mitigation. Overall, this bioswale design was able to capture and manage storms larger than the design storm (38 mm), showing the positive hydrologic performance that can be achieved by this bioswale. The high treatment capabilities were likely due to the high infiltration rate of the media and the underlying soil, longer forebay underlain with media, gravel detention layer with an underdrain, and shallow slope. Full article
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35 pages, 5292 KiB  
Article
Stochastic Method for Evaluating Removal, Fate and Associated Uncertainties of Micropollutants in a Stormwater Biofilter at an Annual Scale
by Kelsey Flanagan, Philippe Branchu, Lila Boudahmane, Emilie Caupos, Dominique Demare, Steven Deshayes, Philippe Dubois, Meriem Kajeiou, Laurent Meffray, Chandirane Partibane, Mohamed Saad, Maria Vitart de Abreu Lima and Marie-Christine Gromaire
Water 2019, 11(3), 487; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w11030487 - 09 Mar 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3858
Abstract
A stochastic method for evaluating the in situ mass balance of micropollutants in a stormwater biofilter, accounting for inlet and outlet loads and the evolution of pollutant mass in the filter media (ΔMsoil) at an annual scale, is proposed. In [...] Read more.
A stochastic method for evaluating the in situ mass balance of micropollutants in a stormwater biofilter, accounting for inlet and outlet loads and the evolution of pollutant mass in the filter media (ΔMsoil) at an annual scale, is proposed. In the field context, this type of calculation presents a number of methodological challenges, associated with estimating water quality for unsampled rain events, reconstituting missing or invalidated flow data and accounting for significant uncertainties associated with these estimations and experimental measurements. The method is applied to a biofiltration swale treating road runoff for two trace metals, Cu and Zn and six organic micropollutants: pyrene (Pyr), phenanthrene (Phen), bisphenol-A (BPA), octylphenol (OP), nonylphenol (NP) and bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP). Pollutant loads were reduced by 27–72%. While organic micropollutants are likely to be lost to degradation or volatilization processes in such systems, dissipation could not be demonstrated for any of the organic micropollutants studied due to emissions from construction materials (case of BPA, OP, NP and DEHP) or high uncertainties in ΔMsoil (case of Pyr and Phen). The necessary conditions for establishing an in situ mass balance demonstrating dissipation, which include acquisition of data associated with all terms over a period long enough that uncertainty propagation is limited and the absence of additional sources of pollutants in the field, are discussed. Full article
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13 pages, 4010 KiB  
Article
Role of Low-Impact Development in Generation and Control of Urban Diffuse Pollution in a Pilot Sponge City: A Paired-Catchment Study
by Hongtao Zhao, Changliang Zou, Jiang Zhao and Xuyong Li
Water 2018, 10(7), 852; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w10070852 - 27 Jun 2018
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3561
Abstract
Low-impact development (LID) is increasingly recognized as one of the most important stormwater source controls on a small scale. However, few studies have reported how LID practices affect the generation and control of urban diffuse pollution at the scale of urban drainage units. [...] Read more.
Low-impact development (LID) is increasingly recognized as one of the most important stormwater source controls on a small scale. However, few studies have reported how LID practices affect the generation and control of urban diffuse pollution at the scale of urban drainage units. In this study, paired conventional and LID drainage units (CDU and LDU) were used to distinguish the role of LID practices in urban sediment accumulation and release at a residential drainage units scale (about 1–2 ha). The urban sediment dynamic build-up process, amounts per unit to equilibrium, amount and percentage of urban sediment washed-off by rainfall, pollutant concentrations during rainfall-runoff processes, and discharge water volume and pollution load from drainage units were all notably different between the paired drainage units. These results indicated that (1) LID practices have a combined effect on urban sediments accumulation and release on a drainage unit scale via reduction of the source area, changes in microtopography and formation of a greater sink area; (2) landscape alterations with LID practices within a small catchment reduced and disconnected areas with impervious surfaces, subsequently reducing the kinetic energy of wash-off and transport for urban sediment; (3) LID practices exerted notable hydrological responses and water quality responses at a micro urban catchment scale by reducing the first flush load and entire process discharge load. The results presented herein will facilitate optimal design for reliable treatment performance and assessment of the effectiveness of LID practices on an urban drainage units scale. Full article
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