1. Title, Journal and Authors

- Title: Urbanization and climate change impacts on surface water quality: Enhancing the resilience by reducing impervious surfaces

- Journal : Water Research

- Authors : Salerno Franco*, Viviano Gaetano, Tartari Gianni

- Affiliation : CNR - Water Research Institute (IRSA), Via Del Mulino 19, Brugherio, MB, 20861, Italy

 

2. Summary

- This paper evaluated the combined and relative impact of urbanization and climate change on surface water quality of water bodies in the highly urbanized watershed.

- The scenarios, in this paper, considered an increase in impervious urban surfaces induced by predicted population growth, and an increase in rainfall intensity induced by altered precipitation pattern.

- The climatic scenario leads to a 40% increase of total phosphorus (TP) load from combined sewer overflow (CSO), while the urbanization scenario leads to an increase of 45%.

- The combined impact of the two scenario leads to a 100% increase of TP load from CSO

- The suggested methodology can be used to find a suitable adaptation strategy to prevent the future impact of climate change on water quality.

- 15% reduction in imperviousness was suggested as a sufficient scenario to prevent the negative effects of climate change.

 

3. Application to research

- The evaluation, which is considered only CSO, underestimated the impact on water quality. Therefore, the methodology can be improved by considering additional pollutant sources (e.g. non-point source)

- The suggested methodology can be used to prove the necessity of green infrastructure techniques (e.g. low impact development) by applying the green infrastructure scenarios.

 

4. Contact

Heewon Jeong (Ph.D. program)

Environmental Systems Engineering Lab.

School of Environmental Science & Engineering

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

1 Oryong-dong Buk-gu Gwangju, 500-712, Korea

Email :  gua01114@gist.ac.kr