Wetlands and waterbodies

Water management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and managing the optimum use of water resources. In an ideal world. Water management planning has regard to all the competing demands for water and seeks to allocate water on an equitable basis to satisfy all uses and demands. This is rarely possible in practice. Water is an essential resource for all life on the planet. Of the water resources on Earth only three per cent of it is not salty and two-thirds of the freshwater is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. Of the remaining one per cent, a fifth is in remote, inaccessible areas and much seasonal rainfall in monsoonal deluges and floods cannot easily be used. At present only about 0.08 per cent of all the worlds fresh water. is exploited by mankind in ever increasing demand for sanitation, drinking, manufacturing, leisure and agriculture Much effort in water management is directed at optimizing the use of water and in minimizing the environmental impact of water use on the natural environment. Successful management of any resources requires accurate knowledge of the resource available, the uses to which it may be put, the competing demands for the resource, measures to and processes to evaluate the significance and worth of competing demands and mechanisms to translate policy decisions into actions on the ground. For water as a resource this is particularly difficult since sources of water can cross many national boundaries and the uses of water include many that are difficult to assign financial value to and may also be difficult to manage in conventional terms. Examples include rare species or ecosystems or the very long term value of ancient ground water reserves.

Managing water in urban settings Half of the worlds people now live in towns and cities, a figure expected to reach two-thirds by 2050. In the areas surrounding urban centres, agriculture must compete with industry and municipal users for safe water supplies, while traditional water sources are becoming polluted with urban wastewater. As cities offer the best opportunities for selling produce, farmers often have no alternative to using polluted water to irrigate their crops. Depending on how developed a citys wastewater treatment is, there can be significant health hazards related to the use of this water. Wastewater from cities can contain a mixture of pollutants. There is usually wastewater from kitchens and toilets along with rainwater runoff. This means that the water usually contains excessive levels of nutrients and salts, as well as a wide range of pathogens. Heavy metals may also be present, along with traces of antibiotics and endocrine disruptors, such as oestrogens. Developing world countries tend to have the lowest levels of wastewater treatment. Often, the water that farmers use for irrigating crops is contaminated with pathogens from sewage. The pathogens of most concern are bacteria, viruses and parasitic worms, which directly affect farmers health and indirectly affect consumers if they eat the contaminated crops. Common illnesses include diarrhoea, which kills 1.1 million people annually and is the second most common cause of infant deaths. Many cholera outbreaks are also related to the reuse of poorly treated wastewater. Actions that reduce or remove contamination, therefore, have the potential to save a large number of lives and improve livelihoods. Scientists have been working to find ways to reduce contamination of food using a method called the 'multiple-barrier approach'. This involves analysing the food production process from growing crops to selling them in markets and eating them, then considering where it might be possible to create a barrier against contamination. Barriers include: introducing safer irrigation practices; promoting on-farm wastewater treatment; taking actions that cause pathogens to die off; and effectively washing crops after harvest in markets and restaurants.

A wetland is an area of land whose soil is satturated with moisture either permanently or seasonally. Such areas may also be covered partially or completely by shallow pools of water. Wetlands include swamps, marshes, and bogs, among others. The water found in wetlands can be saltwater, freshwater, or brackish. The world's largest wetland is the Pantanal which straddles Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay in South America. Wetlands are considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems. Plant life found in wetlands includes: Mangrove, water lilies, cattails, sedges, tamarack, black spruce, cypress, gum, and many others. Animal life includes many different amphibians, reptiles, birds, insects, and mammals. Wetlands have historically been the victim of large-scale draining efforts for real estate development, or flooding for use as recreational lakes. By 1993 half the world's wetlands had been drained. Since the 1970s, more focus has been put on preserving wetlands for their natural function sometimes also at great expense. Wetlands provide a valuable flood control function. Wetlands are very effective at filtering and cleaning water pollution,(often from agricultural runoff from the farms that replaced the wetlands in the first place). To replace these wetland ecosystem services enormous amounts of money have been spent on water purification plants and remediation measures, constructing dams, levees and other artificial flood controls.

Undisturbed Water Cycle

Rainwater runs off the land into water bodies. It also percolates into the soil. Percolation recharges groundwater and filters pollutants. Through both pathways, water makes its way into our creeks, ponds, wetlands, rivers, and oceans. Impacted Water Cycle

Development puts impervious surfaces, roads, sidewalk, and roofs, that prevent percolation. Most of the rainwater runs off the land carrying

pollutants into water bodies. Without percolation, flooding is more frequent and severe. Of course, we have to return for a third time back to P-REX, this time to single out one of their projects, the Pontine Systemic Design. The result of Alan Berger's year as the Prince Charitable Trust Rome Prize recipient in Landscape Architecture, at the American Academy in Rome, in collaboration with Case Brown, this project proposes to reintroduce a gigantic new wetland machine to cleanse and adaptively reuse one of the highly polluted zones of Italy's Lazio region, the drained Pontine Marshes. It is both a productive filtration system and a regional recreation area. Quoting the project summary at length: Choosing a gigantic, consolidated wetland site will likely be more viable in the complex patchwork of land ownership. Given Latinas situation distributed treatment areas would be both enormously complex to purchase and ineffective to manage. The Wetland Machines dimensions are directly related to the amount of wetland area needed to treat the amount of water in the Canale Aque Alththe major collector for this highly polluted zone. At 220 l/s, with a load around 50+ mg/l of N, at least 2 square kilometers of treatment wetland will be required. The design retro-fits and widens existing canals to serve as flow distributors. Furthermore, soil cut/fill operations are used for terraforming shallow ridges and valleys to hold/treat water and make raised areas for new public space and program. At 2.3 sq. km., the new wetland machine will drastically improve the regional water supply and provide needed open space for recreation. At only 6 km from Latina,

the site could house programs and environments almost completely lacking in the regionlarge open landscapes with diverse vegetation. Extensive edge habitat diversity or programsshallow shoals for juvenile fish and swimming, starker edges for fishing and water storage. Early this summer, the President of Latina Province launched a feasibility study to evaluate the potential of this wetland machine.

Bibliografie: 1) 2) 3) 4) Wetlands and waterbodies (Wolfram Kircher) Wikipedia.org Wetland Conservation (William J. Mitsch, James G. Gosselink) Wetland machines (pruned.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-wetlandmachines