Investigating nutrient cycling, retention and bioavailability of effluents discharged from constructed wetlands: optimising wetland management to redu

Constructed wetlands are known to be an effective environmental engineering approach for phosphorus removal from wastewaters. Biogeochemical processes such as sedimentation and uptake by biota remove phosphorus from wastewaters, whilst nitrification and denitrification remove nitrogen pollution. What remains unknown is the impact of these biogeochemical processes on carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus species exported from constructed wetlands to adjacent freshwaters, and whether these wetland systems are generating emerging nutrient-based contaminants. In my PhD research, I hope to understand how biogeochemical processes control the bioavailability of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in constructed wetlands, and how these processes could be creating emerging risks to freshwaters. My research is focused on one of the first full-scale constructed wetland systems in the UK, built by Wessex Water to act as a tertiary treatment process in domestic wastewater recycling. I am working with an interdisciplinary team of supervisors, headed by Penny Johnes (Hydrology Research Group, University of Bristol).