Abstract
Plant litter is an indispensable component of constructed wetlands, but how the submergence of plant litter affects their ecosystem functions and services, such as water purification, is still unclear. Moreover, it is also unclear whether the effects of plant litter submergence depend on other factors such as the duration of litter submergence, water source or litter species identity. Here we conducted a greenhouse experiment by submerging the litter of 7 wetland plant species into three types of water substrates and monitoring changes in water nutrient concentrations. Litter submergence affected water quality positively via decreasing the concentration of nitrate nitrogen and negatively via increasing the concentrations of total nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen and total phosphorus. The effects of litter submergence depended on the duration of litter submergence, the water source, the litter species identity, and the plant life form. Different plant species had different effects on the water nutrient concentrations during litter submergence, and the effects of floating plants might be more negative than that of emergent plants. These results are novel evidence of how the submergence of different plant (life form) litter may affect the purification function of constructed wetlands. For water at low eutrophication levels, submerging a relative small amount of plant litter might improve water quality, via benefiting the denitrification process in water. These findings emphasized the management of floating plant litter (a potential removal) during the maintenance of human-controlled wetland ecosystems and provided a potential tool to improve the water quality of constructed wetlands via submerging plant litter of different types.
Highlights
Wetland plant species are important components of constructed wetlands (CWs), which are engineered treatment systems that encompass a plurality of biological, chemical, and physical processes to improve water quality [1]
We addressed three questions: (1) How does litter submergence affect water nutrient concentrations through time, and (2) whether is there a similar pattern of changes for different water nutrients during litter submergence? (3) Do the effects of litter submergence depend on plant species identity and/or plant life forms?
The CW was divided into 12 sections, which were named from A to L (A-I belongs to the surface flow constructed wetland; J-L belongs to the subsurface flow constructed wetland), and the water in the artificial lake which is polluted by the water bird sewage flows into the CW from the section A and goes back to the lake from the section L
Summary
Wetland plant species are important components of constructed wetlands (CWs), which are engineered treatment systems that encompass a plurality of biological, chemical, and physical processes to improve water quality [1]. A wide range of waste waters from various origins, such as domestic, industrial, agricultural and even landfill leachate, can be treated by CWs [2–. Litter Submergence Affects Water Quality funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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