Tobias Schuetz

Multi-tracer experiments to characterise contaminant mitigation capacities for different types of artificial wetlands

Salt tracers (sodium bromide/sodium chloride) and two different fluorescent tracers, uranine (UR) and sulforhodamine-B (SRB), were injected as a pulse into six different surface flow wetlands (SFWs). Salt tracers documented wetland hydraulics. The fluorescent tracers were used as a reference to mimic photolytic decay (UR) and sorption (SRB) of contaminants as illustrated by a comparison to a real herbicide (Isoproturon), which was used as a model for mobile pesticides. Tracer breakthrough curves were used to document residence time distributions, hydraulic efficiencies, peak attenuation and retention capacities of completely different wetland systems. A 530 m2 forest buffer zone showed considerable peak attenuation but limited retention capabilities despite its large area. Approximately 80% of SRB was permanently retained in a re-structured 325 m2 flood detention pond. These two non-steady SFWs indicated long-term tracer washout. The remaining four SFWs displayed constant outflow rates and steady-state flow conditions. Due to photolytic decay in a 330 m2 row of three wetlands, UR was almost entirely degraded, but the SRB breakthrough suggested relatively low sorption. A 65 m2 shallow flow-through wetland yielded negligible photolytic decay but showed considerable sorption losses. Finally two types of vegetated ditches were analysed. In one case, vegetation was removed from a 413 m long ditch immediately prior to tracer injection. A 30% loss by sorption to sediment and plant remnants occurred at the very beginning of the tracer breakthrough. Inside a second ditch, 80 m long and densely vegetated by Phragmites australis, sorption was even higher and yielded eightfold higher specific SRB retention rates. Although the present findings are only valid for low flow conditions, they indicate that a shallow water depth seems to be a key variable which may increase sorption of tracers and therefore contaminants. Large wetlands with deep water bodies may attenuate concentrations efficiently, but unit load reduction was found to be more significant in shallow systems even at much higher flow velocities.

Model Based Estimation of a Natural Water Balance as Reference for Planning in Urban Areas

The water balance of urban areas differs considerably from the landscape water balance. Increased surface runoff, reduced groundwater recharge and evaporation change the hydrological regime, the morphology and ecology of water bodies close to the cities, the groundwater in the urban area and the urban climate. Today’s urban drainage systems are designed to prevent, reduce, drain, seep away, evaporate or discharge precipitation into nearby surface waters with considerable delays. In doing so, it follows the principles of the German Water Resources Act (WHG) and the objectives of the relevant technical regulations DWA-A 102 to keep changes in the natural water balance by settlement activities as low as ecologically, technically and economically acceptable. A reference for the “natural” water balance has to be defined as a planning objective in order to quantify the hydrological changes in settlements. As a suitable reference, we propose to use the water balance of the landscape of the associated ecoregion with today’s cultural land use without urban developments. This approach is more suitable to define local conditions than the water balance of the enclosed catchment. The presented calculation approach to define reference values of the water balance, uses soil and geological properties, precipitation and climate data and can be implemented and applied uniformly throughout Germany. The water balances in this study are simulated with the water balance model RoGeR. In this study, the developed approach is applied for five locations in Germany.