Hydrological Design of Two Low-Impact Development Techniques in a Semi-Arid Climate Zone of Central Mexico

Abstract

This paper deals with the design of a bioretention cell and an infiltration trench in a semi-arid micro watershed. The study area was analyzed by characteristics such as slope changes (S), direction and maximum length of the urban runoff (L), and soil use (runoff coefficient, R c ). The bioretention cell was designed by the calculation of variables such as drainage area (A), concentration time (T c ), rainfall intensity (i), maximum peak drained (Q max ), inlet and outlet runoff (Q a and Q out , respectively), temperature (T), evaporation (Ev), potential evapotranspiration (PE m ), consumptive use (U) for tolerant plants to semi-arid climates, and soil infiltration capacity (Inf ). To design the infiltration trench, only T c , Q max , and i were taken into account. The results showed that the designed bioretention cell could retain between 5.37% and 2.25% of runoff volume. As the efficiency of the bioretention cell can be defined by the need for additional irrigation, our results showed that the cell is inefficient in some of the dry months (November and December), even in years characterized by abundant rainfall. Besides, it was shown that the designed infiltration trench could store or infiltrate the water from typical rain events. Based on these results, it is the implementation of more Low-Impact Development (LID) for runoff management in the study area is recommended.

Influence of Changes of Catchment Permeability and Frequency of Rainfall on Critical Storm Duration in an Urbanized Catchment—A Case Study, Cracow, Poland

“…It should also be noted that the sub catchments within the Sudół Dominikańśki may have their own critical storm durations depending on their size and land use, a further complicating factor in holistic watershed management. Regardless, the increase of urbanization contributes to both flow and volume increases, and even slight changes in the CN that occur due to underestimation or changes in land use policy could exacerbate this problem [41,42]. Further, the lowering of time of concentration has a substantial impact on peak flows yet is often not given as much consideration as land use change.…”

“…Again, routing urban land use to green spaces may aid in delaying this time of concentration, reducing flood risk. Overall, the larger volume of runoff and the higher efficiency of water conveyance through artificially straightened channels can lead to wider stream channels, as well as to increasingly frequent and severe floods [41,42]. When a large-scale flood occurs, the rainfall intensity is greater than the infiltration rate, which causes more surface runoff [43].…”

Soil Sealing and Hydrological Changes during the Development of the University Campus of Elche (Spain)

“…The first step to reduce water deterioration is to understand how the natural water balance is disturbed. Larger impervious surfaces decrease the infiltration rate of rainwater and reduce the soil’s capacity to hold water [ 59 ]; this intuitively leads us to deduce that greater runoff will be generated.…”

Evapotranspiration from Green Infrastructure: Benefit, Measurement, and Simulation

“…Penman-Monteith (P-M) equation, taking a full account of energy balance, convection, and canopy resistance while well documented by previous agricultural studies, is widely applied to estimate ET from almost all types of GI such as green roof [6,57,74,83,93,[96][97][98][99], bioretention [64,80,100], and permeable pavement [101]. Simpler models, such as Priest-Taylor equation without considering convection [102], or solely temperature-based Thornthwaite Equation [59,85,103] and Hargreaves Equation [96,104], have also applied for GI when fewer inputs and less calibration effort required. Although a simpler method may achieve a better estimate for a unique site, the P-M equation has been framed into the classical protocol [105] to compute reference evapotranspiration (ET o ), which represents ET from a standard Evapotranspiration from Green Infrastructure: Benefit, Measurement, and Simulation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80910 land cover with fixed vegetation characteristics (resistance, height, etc.).…”