Low impact development implementation: Investigation on the hydrologic performance of bioretention via experimental models

Efficientuse of water is vital for economic, social and environmental sustainability ofwater resources. Especially, urbanization and thus high imperviousness resultsin a decrease in infiltration and percolation. Consequently, surface runoffgenerated over the surface increases tremendously and results in floods.Surface runoff also washes off the pollutants that are built up on the surfaceduring dry days which results in poor water quality. Therefore, new methods inhydrology are necessary for environmental sustainability, protection of waterresources, and mitigation of impacts of urbanization on environment and waterresources. In this study, Low Impact Development (LID) Best ManagementPractices (BMP) are investigated in order to prevent high surface runoff andwater pollution due to land use change caused by urbanization. Bioretention,which is a LID type of storm water management practice, is investigated tomitigate impacts of high surface runoff and nonpoint source pollution. For thispurpose, an experimental set-up is developed to observe the hydrologicefficiency and performance of bioretention. Performance of bioretention on peakflow decrease is observed by evaluating experimental results. The mechanicalproperties of materials used in bioretention columns are investigated. It isobserved that the material type and properties are effective in retaining waterin bioretention. As the sand content increases, the outflow at the exit of thecolumn also increases and if the fine grained material increases, the outflowat the exit of the column decreases.