Possibilities of Small Water Reservoir Impact Improvement on Surface Water Quality in Agricultural Landscape

Abstract

In the Czech Republic, a significant amount of agricultural landscape nutrients is swept away by surface washes and leakages to subsoil. Subsequently there is a negative influence on surface water quality, where of course also point sources of pollution participate in. Flowing surface water often becomes stagnant while the certain self‑purifying processes proceed both in the flowing and stagnant waters. It can be simultaneously stated that the self‑purifying process is practically uncontrollable, primarily due to the impact of many entering factors. One of the environmental and technical elements providing quality improvement of water running off a water reservoir is deployment of constructed floating wetlands (CFW). The theoretical background, as well as the laboratory measurements carried out on the test land of the Brno University of Technology in experimental tanks, evidence the significant treatment efficiency of the CFW. Within the research activities, we focused on the general pollution parameters set for surface waters. The first results show that the total phosphorus concentration removal efficiency is 38.8 % after 22 days with employment of the CFW which is a considerably higher value compared to the lysimeter with no CFW where the removal efficiency was only 4.37 %. The results can be large‑scale applied to most of the small water reservoirs situated in the agricultural landscape.

Keywords

• agricultural landscape
• water reservoir
• constructed floating wetlands
• self‑purifying
• nitrogen
• phosphorus