Stormwater management that relies on ecosystem processes, such as tree canopy interception and rhizosphere biology, can be difficult to achieve in built environments because urban land is costly and urban soil inhospitable to vegetation. Yet such systems offer a potentially valuable tool for achieving both sustainable urban forests and stormwater management. We evaluated tree water uptake and r...

Capturing stormwater is becoming a new standard for sustainable urban stormwater management, which can be used to supplement water supply portfolios in water-stressed cities. The key advantage of harvesting stormwater is to use low impact development (LID) systems for treatment to meet water quality requirement for non-potable uses. However, the lack of scientific studies to validate the safety...

Many communities have funded stormwater management from property taxes paid into their general funds. However, there is great competition for municipal general fund dollars from other worthy municipal programs. Stormwater management improvements typically have a low priority, unless the municipality is reacting to a recent major storm or regulatory action. The total cost of stormwater managemen...

The use of decentralised, sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) for the treatment of stormwater runoff is becoming increasingly prevalent in Germany. Decentralised SUDS can offer a viable and attractive alternative to end of pipe treatment systems for stormwater runoff from urban areas. However, there is still some uncertainty regarding the long-term performance of SUDS, and the general leg...

The Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States, is rich in natural resources. Its watershed has been impacted by excessive and degraded stormwater runoff from rapid urbanization. We used an empirical approach to investigate how local planning capacity in the Chesapeake Bay watershed affected stream flow. A multiple regression analysis was employed to examine to what extent that th...

Stormwater runoff is a known pollutant source capable of causing surface water degradation, especially in highly populated areas such as Central Florida. Wet detention ponds manage this stormwater, but most of the ponds do not remove enough nutrients, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus, to meet TMDL regulations. This paper presents the use of a Chamber Upflow Filter and Skimmer (CUFS) filled ...

Increased stormwater flows are a direct result of urbanization and the consequent increase in the proportion of land area under impervious surface. Due to its contribution to abnormally high stream flows and its role as a carrier of pollutants that degrade water quality, excess stormwater runoff has negative impacts on both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In response to the increased magnit...

As stormwater flows are intermittent, the requirement to store urban runoff is important to the design of a stormwater re-use scheme. In many urban areas, the space available to provide storage is limited and thus the need to optimise the storage volume becomes critical. This paper will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of two different approaches of providing storage: 1) a single storag...

Many best-management practices (BMPs) currently used in urban regions have been developed to minimize flood risk, sustain downstream ecosystems, and secure the quality of groundwater sources either directly or indirectly. One such BMP is the reuse of stormwater by removing nutrients from the nutrient-laden “first flush” water collected in wet or dry ponds; this practice has led to the developme...

Ecologically Sustainable Development in Australia can be described as going beyond the protection of the environment from the impacts of pollution, to protecting and conserving natural resources. In an urban environmental context this means urban development (both greenfield development and urban renewal) that seeks to have no long term effects on various aspects of the environment related to a...