Green infrastructure and climate change impacts on the flows and water quality of urban catchments: Salmons Brook and Pymmes Brook in north-east London
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Poor water quality is a widespread issue in urban rivers and streams in London. Localised pollution can have impacts on local communities, from health issues to environmental degradation and restricted recreational use of water. The Salmons and Pymmes Brooks, located in the London Borough of Enfield, flow into the River Lee, and in this paper, the impacts of misconnected sewers, urban runoff and atmospheric pollution have been evaluated. The first step towards finding a sustainable and effective solution to these issues is to identify sources and paths of pollutants and to understand their cycle through catchments and rivers. The INCA water quality model has been applied to the Salmons and Pymmes urban catchments in north-east London, with the aim of providing local communities and community action groups such as Thames21 with a tool they can use to assess the water quality issue. INCA is a process-based, dynamic flow and quality model, and so it can account for daily changes in temperature, flow, water velocity and residence time that all affect reaction kinetics and hence chemical flux. As INCA is process-based, a set of mitigation strategies have been evaluated including constructed wetland across the catchment to assess pollution control. The constructed wetlands can make a significant difference reducing sediment transport and improving nutrient control for nitrogen and phosphorus. The results of this paper show that a substantial reduction in nitrate, ammonium and phosphorus concentrations can be achieved if a proper catchment-scale wetland implementation strategy is put in place. Furthermore, the paper shows how the nutrient reduction efficiency of the wetlands should not be affected by climate change.
Date Issued
2022-03-14
Date Acceptance
2022-03-02
Citation
Hydrology Research, 2022, 53 (4)
ISSN
1998-9563
Publisher
IWA Publishing
Journal / Book Title
Hydrology Research
Volume
53
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits copying, adaptation and redistribution, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits copying, adaptation and redistribution, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Sponsor
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000780175200001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Grant Number
NE/S003495/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Water Resources
catchment management
green infrastructure
modelling
urban rivers
water quality
wetlands
MULTIPLE SOURCE ASSESSMENT
LAND-USE CHANGE
MODEL STRUCTURE
NITROGEN MODEL
CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS
RIVER SYSTEMS
MASS-BALANCE
INCA
NUTRIENT
POLLUTION
Publication Status
Published