Storm-Water Bioinfiltration as No-Irrigation Landscaping Alternative in Semiarid Climates
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 140, Issue 2
Abstract
In semiarid cold desert climates, bioinfiltration gardens as green infrastructure storm-water management facilities show promise to serve as both on-site storm-water management and no-irrigation landscaping. Both services must be demonstrated for bioinfiltration to be considered green infrastructure, because most urban centers in cold desert climates in the western United States (e.g., Salt Lake City, Utah; Boise, Idaho; and Denver, Colorado) must import water from the Colorado River for landscape irrigation, radically changing local and regional hydrology. To verify that storm-water runoff can sustain properly selected plants, we installed soil moisture sensors in a bioinfiltration garden in a cold desert climate with a contributing impervious area to garden area ratio of and monitored soil water for one summer. In spite of the small contributing impervious area, we found that the minimum soil water potential () observed was . Plants native to cold desert climates often do not show signs of water stress until drops below , indicating the selected plants did not experience water stress in this study. We conclude that with proper site design and plant selection, plants in bioinfiltration gardens can be sustained solely by runoff. If the bioinfiltration gardens are constructed in fall, winter, or spring, no irrigation will likely be needed for establishment.
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Acknowledgments
The gardens evaluated herein were constructed with grants from the Sustainable Campus Initiative Fund (SCIF) administered by the University Of Utah Office of Sustainability. We would like to thank the Office of Suitability and the University Of Utah Civil and Environmental Engineering Department for all of their support, Zack Steel and Pascaline Loricourt for their assistance in filling Ollas and downloading data, the University Of Utah student chapter of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA), as well the Utelite Corporation and Layton Construction for their contributions in supplies, time, and money to install the tested bioinfiltration gardens. Additional support was provided by the NSF EPSCoR grant EPS 1208732 awarded to Utah State University, as part of the State of Utah Research Infrastructure Improvement Award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 140 • Issue 2 • February 2014
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 28, 2013
Accepted: Aug 20, 2013
Published online: Aug 22, 2013
Published in print: Feb 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Mar 15, 2014
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