Journal article
From Rain Tanks to Catchments: Use of Low-Impact Development To Address Hydrologic Symptoms of the Urban Stream Syndrome
A Askarizadeh, MA Rippy, TD Fletcher, DL Feldman, J Peng, P Bowler, AS Mehring, BK Winfrey, JA Vrugt, A Aghakouchak, SC Jiang, BF Sanders, LA Levin, S Taylor, SB Grant
Environmental Science and Technology | Published : 2015
Abstract
Catchment urbanization perturbs the water and sediment budgets of streams, degrades stream health and function, and causes a constellation of flow, water quality, and ecological symptoms collectively known as the urban stream syndrome. Low-impact development (LID) technologies address the hydrologic symptoms of the urban stream syndrome by mimicking natural flow paths and restoring a natural water balance. Over annual time scales, the volumes of stormwater that should be infiltrated and harvested can be estimated from a catchment-scale water-balance given local climate conditions and preurban land cover. For all but the wettest regions of the world, a much larger volume of stormwater runoff ..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Partnerships for International Research and Education (OISE-1243543). The NSF Water-PIRE team is investigating ecological, engineering, hydrologic, and social science aspects of LID technologies and water management in Melbourne (Australia) and Southern California (U.S.) with the goal of integrating these aspects into decision-making tools that improve urban water sustainability (http://water-pire.uci.edu/). S.G.B. acknowledges financial support from an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP130103619) and L.A.L. acknowledges financial support from USC Sea Grant (NOAA award USC 61207781). The authors thank three anonymous reviewers and the following individuals for their careful review of the manuscript: M. Stewardson, R. Casas-Mulet, E. Gee, A. McCluskey, A. Herrero, and B. Celine.