The potential of large floodplains to remove nitrate in river basins – The Danube case

Tschikof, Martin; Gericke, Andreas; Venohr, Markus; Weigelhofer, Gabriele; Bondar‐Kunze, Elisabeth; Kaden, Ute Susanne; Hein, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156879

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…NBS such as constructed wetlands, restored floodplains, detention ponds, and barrier removals can improve freshwater quality through various mechanisms including sedimentation, denitrification, and anaerobic ammonium oxidation [75,76]. For instance, constructed wetlands remove pollutants and excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, from stormwater runoff by increasing residence time and providing conditions for the metabolism and settling [77,78].…”

Section: Improve Water Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Levee setbacks and e-flows can greatly improve within-channel water quality [75,85]. These NBS practices reduce erosion and excess sediment influx on the river and improve downstream water quality by reducing flow velocity, dissipating the energy of flood peaks, and increasing the residence time of water in the floodplain, where pollutants can settle out or be metabolized [76,86]. The restoration of flooding dynamics by levee setbacks provides ideal conditions for denitrification (low oxygen and abundant organic carbon), by local bacterial assemblages, leading to the removal of bioavailable nitrogen from the water column and improvements in water quality [87].…”

Section: Improve Water Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The potential for nature-based solutions to combat the freshwater biodiversity crisis

et al. 2023

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Enthusiasm for and investments in nature-based solutions (NBS) as sustainable strategies for climate adaptation and infrastructure development is building among governments, the scientific community, and engineering practitioners. This is particularly true for water security and water-related risks. In a freshwater context, NBS may provide much-needed “win-wins” for society and the environment that could benefit imperiled freshwater biodiversity. Such conservation benefits are urgently needed given the ongoing freshwater biodiversity crisis, with declines in freshwater species and their habitats occurring at more than twice the rate of marine or terrestrial systems. However, for NBS to make meaningful contributions to safeguarding freshwater biodiversity, clear links must be established between NBS applications and priorities for conservation. In this paper, we link common water-related NBS to six priority actions for freshwater life established by the conservation science n community, and highlight priority research and knowledge that will be necessary to bring NBS to bear on the freshwater biodiversity crisis. In particular, we illustrate how NBS can play a direct role in restoring degraded aquatic and floodplain ecosystems, enhancing in-stream water quality, and improving hydrological connectivity among freshwater ecosystems. System-level monitoring is needed to ensure that freshwater NBS deliver on their promised benefits for ecosystems and species.

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Section: Improve Water Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Improve Water Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The potential for nature-based solutions to combat the freshwater biodiversity crisis

et al. 2023

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“…Floodplains perform numerous functions that support ecosystem services (Opperman et al, 2010), including the mitigation of water‐related hazards (Gourevitch et al, 2020), improvement of water quality (Wohl, 2021), and provisioning of riparian and aquatic habitats that support some of the most biodiverse settings in the world (Ward et al, 1999). Increasingly, floodplains are recognized as an important component of watershed management plans aimed at mitigating degraded water quality in receiving waters, such as excess nutrient runoff contributing to harmful algal blooms (Gordon et al, 2020; Tschikof et al, 2022). Floodplains can be leveraged for their storage of sediment and nutrients, to reduce downstream flux of these constituents (Johnson et al, 2016; Noe & Hupp, 2005; Noe et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi‐scale drivers of spatial patterns in floodplain sediment and phosphorus deposition

Diehl

Underwood

Triantafillou

et al. 2022

Earth Surf Processes Landf

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The capacity for floodplains to capture sediment and filter pollutants is spatially variable and depends on the complex interactions of geomorphic, geologic, and hydrologic variables that operate at multiple scales. In this study, we integrated watershedscale and local assessments to improve our understanding of floodplain depositional patterns. We developed a dataset of event-scale observations of sediment and phosphorus deposition rates distributed at 129 plots across large environmental gradients of floodplain topography, valley geometry, and watershed characteristics in the Lake Champlain Basin, Vermont. Plot-scale observations were used to evaluate the crossscale influence of environmental factors and were summarized into site-scale averages to explore regional trends. Consistent with other studies, floodplain deposition generally scaled with drainage area, but trends were longitudinally discontinuous and depended on variations in valley width and slope. While variability in deposition patterns at the watershed-scale was large (average of 2.0 (0.2-9.8) kg sediment m À2 yr À1 ; average of 1.4 (0.2-6.5) g phosphorus m À2 yr À1 ), the range in deposition rates locally across a floodplain was greater (average of 4.6 (0.06-21.7) kg sediment

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Research on coupled socio‐ecohydrological systems—implementing a highly integrative and interdisciplinary research agenda in the Doctoral School “Human River Systems in the 21st Century (HR21)”

Hein,

Auhser,

Byekwaso

et al. 2023

River Research & Apps

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The access to an adequate quantity and quality of water is vital to sustain healthy ecosystems and human socioeconomic development. However, the shift from an agrarian, solar energy based to an industrialized, fossil fuel‐based socio‐metabolic regime has put natural water resources under stress and led to dramatic transformations of riverine landscapes in the Anthropocene. Thus, we need interdisciplinary research approaches that integrate the knowledge and methods from ecology, humanities, and engineering. The Doctoral School “Human River Systems in the 21st Century” (HR21) studies riverine landscapes as coupled socio‐ecohydrological systems (SEHS) within four research clusters, that is, connectivity, metabolism, vulnerability, and governance. HR21 analyzes the transformation processes and coevolution of nature and society in rivers and their response to future environmental, social, cultural, and economic drivers of change. HR21 aims to improve the understanding of the coupling of the socioeconomic, ecological, and hydrological systems within industrialized riverine landscapes to support their urgent, more sustainable transformation. To discuss how this agenda can be implemented, five different HR21 PhD projects are presented, clearly routed in one scientific domain, applying a combination of the research clusters and addressing various topics: (i) hydropower effects in high alpine river ecosystems, (ii) wastewater impacts on carbon storage and greenhouse gas fluxes in tropical wetlands, (iii) the nutrient retention and ecosystem service potential of floodplains in large river catchments, and the influence of hydrometeorological variables on (iv) the runoff response and on (v) the transit time distribution of runoff, both impacting water resource management at the basin level. These examples highlight how disciplinary PhD research can be framed within an interdisciplinary research agenda to coupled SEHS.

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The potential of large floodplains to remove nitrate in river basins – The Danube case

Cited by 11 publications

References 54 publications

The potential for nature-based solutions to combat the freshwater biodiversity crisis

The potential for nature-based solutions to combat the freshwater biodiversity crisis

Multi‐scale drivers of spatial patterns in floodplain sediment and phosphorus deposition

Research on coupled socio‐ecohydrological systems—implementing a highly integrative and interdisciplinary research agenda in the Doctoral School “Human River Systems in the 21st Century (HR21)”

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