Flood resilience, amenity and biodiversity benefits of an historic urban pond

Abstract

<jats:p>The main pond within the historic Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is an important component of urban blue-green infrastructure. This paper reports on flood resilience provided by the pond (simulated using the CityCAT hydrodynamic model), its water residence times (obtained using the Shetran hydrological model), and the ecology and biodiversity (vascular plants, bryophytes, aquatic invertebrates, phyto- and zooplankton, birds) of the pond and the adjacent area. The results show that the pond improves the flood resilience with at least a 27% reduction in the peak discharge during a 1 h, one in 100-year event. The area represents a biodiversity hot spot with a range of native taxa occurring among introduced plant species. The plankton community is dominated by diatoms, reflecting elevated levels of turbulence and a relatively short residence time, with an average value of 10 days. Analysis of macroinvertebrate community indicates a potential for water quality improvement. The results are discussed in relation to multiple societal benefits related to flood resilience, recreation, education, water quality, amenity and biodiversity value. The conclusions may prove particularly valuable for introducing practical measures in the water catchment, preventing waterlogging of the soil and ensuring an uninterrupted supply of public services.</jats:p> <jats:p>This article is part of the theme issue ‘Urban flood resilience'.</jats:p>

Hydrology, Ecology and Water Chemistry of Two Suds Ponds: Detailed Analysis of Ecosystem Services Provided by Blue-Green Infrastructure

“…The research presented here highlights the importance of ecosystem services provided by the SuDS ponds studied and gives an account of their hydrology, ecology and water quality, as well as an insight into further multiple benefits associated with amenity and biodiversity values. The results are in line with other studies demonstrating that BGI pond sites provide an increase in flood resilience and improvements in water quality as well as aid to the creation of wildlife corridors, thus contributing to the enhancement of urban biodiversity [9].…”

“…These environmental factors mirror those of the only other known Lothians site, adjacent to Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Hence despite its small size, this SuDS asset provides a very important contribution to the local biodiversity, which is in line with other studies on the Edinburgh BGI ponds [9].…”

“…Juniper Green Pond is situated just south-west of the Edinburgh bypass in a residential area at Woodhall Millbrae (adjacent to flats [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], near the Water of Leith footpath, and has an area of approximately 220 m 2 . According to Jarvie et al [5] the pond was (re)established in 2005 (www.junipergreencc.org.uk/jg300-1/leaflet.html) (previously there were old mill ponds in this area when the mill was operational) and is managed by James Gibb Company.…”

The Land Sparing, Water Surface Use Efficiency, and Water Surface Transformation of Floating Photovoltaic Solar Energy Installations

“…We also found that the water bodies in our study are not round; some had roundness akin to that of an isosceles triangle (0.78), including Windsor, CA (0.78), and Walden, CO (0.79), and the least round is Orlando, FL (0.67). Across broader datasets of FPVs, understanding the shape of the recipient water bodies for FPVs may serve to, in part, identify FPV sites where biodiversity is most likely to intersect with FPV development, especially in urban water bodies which serve as critical refugia for biodiversity and support diverse ecosystem services to local communities [78,79].…”

“…We found that the FPVs were very similar in compactness, ranging from 0.68 to 0.76. Ultimately, the shape of an FPV may be driven by not only equipment design standards by the FPV manufacturer (compactness did vary across FPVs by Ciel et Terre©), but also sizing optimization to satisfy demand load, water body attributes (shape, water quality, biodiversity), water body co-use needs and values (flood resilience, recreation, education, visual amenity), meter accessibility, and others, which should be further explored [79]. These factors likely also play a role in determining the amount of water surface covered by panels that, unlike compactness, we found varied strikingly across the four FPVs from 3.1 to 69.8%.…”