From Rain Tanks to Catchments: Use of Low-Impact Development To Address Hydrologic Symptoms of the Urban Stream Syndrome

Abstract

Catchment urbanization perturbs the water and sediment budgets of streams, degrades stream health and function, and causes a constellation of flow, water quality, and ecological symptoms collectively known as the urban stream syndrome. Low-impact development (LID) technologies address the hydrologic symptoms of the urban stream syndrome by mimicking natural flow paths and restoring a natural water balance. Over annual time scales, the volumes of stormwater that should be infiltrated and harvested can be estimated from a catchment-scale water-balance given local climate conditions and preurban land cover. For all but the wettest regions of the world, a much larger volume of stormwater runoff should be harvested than infiltrated to maintain stream hydrology in a preurban state. Efforts to prevent or reverse hydrologic symptoms associated with the urban stream syndrome will therefore require: (1) selecting the right mix of LID technologies that provide regionally tailored ratios of stormwater harvesting and infiltration; (2) integrating these LID technologies into next-generation drainage systems; (3) maximizing potential cobenefits including water supply augmentation, flood protection, improved water quality, and urban amenities; and (4) long-term hydrologic monitoring to evaluate the efficacy of LID interventions.

Stormwater management network effectiveness and implications for urban watershed function: A critical review

“…Last, impacts of urbanization beyond impervious surfaces continue to alter hydrology. Conceptually, it is possible to return to a predevelopment hydrologic condition (Askarizadeh et al, ) without the residuals illustrated in the above hysteresis curves if SCM networks perfectly mitigate all effects of urbanization.…”

Observation and Estimation of Evapotranspiration from an Irrigated Green Roof in a Rain-Scarce Environment

“…Urbanization can perturb the natural patterns of streamflow, channel morphology, water quality, and ecosystem structure and function [1]. To address such an "urban stream syndrome", the natural water balance needs to be restored via harvesting, infiltrating, or evapotranspiring the extra stormwater runoff caused by urbanization [1,2].…”

“…To address such an "urban stream syndrome", the natural water balance needs to be restored via harvesting, infiltrating, or evapotranspiring the extra stormwater runoff caused by urbanization [1,2]. As one type of green infrastructure (GI), green roofs provide rainfall-runoff retention and stormwater filtration for non-severe storms, and are especially useful in densely built areas where space for stormwater retention measures is limited and expensive [3][4][5].…”

Predictive Power of Clean Bed Filtration Theory for Fecal Indicator Bacteria Removal in Stormwater Biofilters

“…7,15 Among their water quality benefits, biofilters may be useful for removing fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) from dry and wet weather urban runoff. 16−22 FIB, which include Escherichia coli and enterococci bacteria, are routinely used by public health officials to assess the human health risk of recreating in fresh and marine surface waters.…”