Abstract

Low impact development (LID) was promoted as an alternative to conventional urban drainage methods. The effects of LID at site or urban scales have been widely evaluated. This project aims to investigate the impact of LID implementation on basin runoff at regional scale in a half urbanized catchment; especially the overlap of urban and rural sub-flows at peak times is concerned. A SUPERFLEX conceptual model framework was adapted as a semi-distributed model to simulate the rainfall-runoff relationship in the catchment for San Antonio, Texas as a case study. Scenario analyses of both urban development and LID implementation were conducted. Results show that (1) the infill urban development strategy benefits more from runoff control than the sprawl urban development strategy; (2) in non-flood season permeable pavements, bioretention cells, and vegetated swales decrease peak runoff forcefully and permeable pavements, bioretention cells, and green roofs are good at runoff volume retention; (3) contrary to the general opinion about the peak reduction effect of LID, for partly urbanized, partly rural basins and extremely wet conditions, the implementation of LID practices delays urban peak runoff and may cause stacking of rural and urban sub-flows, leading to larger basin peaks.

Highlights

  • Urbanization brought numerous environmental and hydrological changes to river basins and led to severe disturbance to the natural water processes

  • The effects of Low impact development (LID) at site or urban scales have been widely evaluated. This project aims to investigate the impact of LID implementation on basin runoff at regional scale in a half urbanized catchment; especially the overlap of urban and rural sub-flows at peak times is concerned

  • The observed total basin runoff is 166 mm in 600 research days. It is 166 mm for the model result, in which urban districts (27 % of the catchment areas) produce 63 % of total runoff; only 37 % of total runoff is discharged from rural areas 240 (73 % of the catchment areas)

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Summary

Introduction

Urbanization brought numerous environmental and hydrological changes to river basins and led to severe disturbance to the natural water processes. Without sufficient and continuous groundwater recharge, more environmental issues occur, such as land subsidence, groundwater shortage, and water quality degradation (Ahiablame and Shakya, 2016). These human activities modify catchments from a relatively robust natural condition to a sensitive and unstable urbanized 30 status, resulting in water scarcity in dry seasons and waterlogging or urban flooding in rain seasons (Gilroy and Mccuen, 2009; Ahiablame et al, 2012).

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