Constructed Wetlands and Sustainable Development

This book explains how with careful planning and design, the functions and performance of constructed wetlands can provide a huge range of benefits to humans and the environment. With functions ranging from habitat enhancement, food production, recreation, wastewater treatment and stormwater management, the best constructed wetlands are multi-functional systems that provide ecosystem services in every category – provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting

Because constructed wetlands are complex natural systems this book emphasizes the interdisciplinary efforts required to plan, engineer, design and monitor them. Sections address resource management (landscape planning), technical issues (environmental engineering), recreation planning and physical design (landscape architecture) and biological systems (ecology). Additionally, a number of planning and application scales will be addressed as constructed wetlands can be part of a national strategy of flood management or the stormwater treatment implemented on a residential parcel. Included throughout are case studies from the US, Europe and China, which show how these principles have been put into practice.

Written for upper level students and practitioners, this highly illustrated book provides designers with the tools they need to ensure constructed wetlands are sustainably created and well managed.

Gary Austin is the author of Green Infrastructure for Landscape Planning (Routledge 2014). He is a landscape architect who studied under John Lyle and taught at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He has practiced in the public and private sector and has taught landscape architecture at the University of Washington and the University of Idaho. His teaching and research focus on community revitalization, urban biological diversity and treatment of wastewater and stormwater for water quality improvement.

Kongjian Yu is the coauthor (with Mary Padua) of the influential book The Art of Survival (2007) .He is a visiting professor of landscape architecture at Harvard University and the principal of Turenscape, a large landscape architecture firm in China. The many constructed and monitored wetland projects that his firm has designed will form the core of the case studies in China. Mr. Yu is also a professor and dean at Beijing University and two or three of his graduate students will assist us with research and production of graphics.