This document outlines a study that will quantify water quality parameters at a contaminated brownfield site undergoing wetland habitat improvement projects. The site has interconnected water bodies and wetlands running north to south, and pollution from iron salts has negatively impacted the environment. Reedbeds have been created to filter iron loads. The study aims to sample chemical water quality, determine if macrophytes have successfully remediated pollution, and map how water moves through the hydrological regime in relation to potential phytoremediation. A monitoring program will quantitatively survey the wetland habitats and statistically analyze the data to assess the effectiveness of wetland phytoremediation in improving water quality.

1. Introduction
• The Bickershaw site has a complex hydrological regime with a series of interconnected water
bodies and wetland systems primarily running north to south (Figure 1)
• Colliery shales result in a substrate that is ferrous rich resulting in ochre deposition via
precipitation of ferrous and ferric materials from the water column (Champion. 2007).
• Pollution via iron salts has negatively affected aquatic flora, invertebrates and fish populations
(Champion. 2017a).
• Emergent macrophyte species are well represented across the site with greater reedmace Typha
augustifolia, grey club-rush Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani, common reed Phragmites astralis,
and sedges Carax spp all present.
• Reedbeds have been created to filter out iron loads and clean the water column to reduce
pollutant loading (figure 3). No monitoring network is currently assessing this (Champion. 2017b).
• Emergent macrophytes can be an effective tool in phytoremediation and are already incorporated
into constructed wetlands and integrated constructed wetlands (Dhote and Dixit. 2009).
Objectives:
1. Quantitatively sample a range of chemical water quality parameters.
2. Determine if Macrophyte species located within the site have successfully remediated polluted
waters.
3. Build an overview of how water moves through the site’s hydrological regime and link its
movement to potential phytoremediation.
Quantitative water quality survey of wetland habitats at a contaminated brownfield site.
Wetlands have the potential to improve water
quality as part of habitat improvement projects.
If you would like more information please
contact me at: d.bryan@Lancaster.ac.uk or
take a picture to
download the poster
Acknowledgements
• Ballance, R. and Bartram, J., 2002. Water quality monitoring: a practical guide to the design and implementation of
freshwater quality studies and monitoring programmes. CRC Press.
• Dhote, S. and Dixit, S., 2009. Water quality improvement through macrophytes—a review. Environmental Monitoring
and Assessment, 152(1-4), pp.149-153.
• Champion, M. 2007. Neverson’s Flash Reedbed Creation for Water Storage. The wildlife trust.
• Champion, M. 2017.A Bickershaw SBI. Fen Creation for Habitat, Water quality, and Floodwater storage. Bickershaw
Phase 2. The Wildlife trust.
• Champion, M. 2017 B Bickershaw Reedbed Creation for Habitat, Water quality, and Floodwater storage. The wildlife
trust.
• Marchand, L., Mench, M., Jacob, D.L. and Otte, M.L., 2010. Metal and metalloid removal in constructed wetlands, with
emphasis on the importance of plants and standardized measurements: a review. Environmental pollution, 158(12),
pp.3447-3461
• Williams, J.B., 2002. Phytoremediation in wetland ecosystems: progress, problems, and potential. Critical Reviews in
Plant Sciences, 21(6), pp.607-635.
I would like to express my special thanks to the Lancaster Environment Centre for funding this project alongside my
supervisor (Dr. Nick Chappell) and Senior teaching technician (John Crosse) for assisting me in the project.
David Bryan
Abstract
Lancashire Wildlife trust has implemented a number of wetland improvement projects that have the joint purpose of
improving the habitability and enhancing flood retention capacity in a heavily degraded post-industrial site. Current
monitoring networks are entirely focussed upon ecological parameters and have completely neglected water quality
factors. A quantitative water quality survey of the site will be performed to assess the extent to which wetlands can
remediate contaminated water and improve overall water quality.
Figure 1: Showing the map of the Bickershaw site with the hydrological regime.
Method
The design of this monitoring programme is based on work from Balance and
Bartram (2002). It follows a clear structure:
1. Identify the objectives of the monitoring programme
2. Design monitoring network
• Measure Electrical conductivity and pH with a probe
• Measure a multitude of organic substances including Total suspended
sediment, Biological oxygen demand, temperature ,etc. Utilising a
Spectrolyser
• Sample Iron concentration in water
3. Preliminary survey (Recently completed)
• Test materials and methods
• Check effectiveness and feasibility of monitoring design
• Acquire background information
4. Fieldwork (Current stage)
• Conduct measurements and collect samples
• Hydrological measurements
5. Laboratory work
• Chemical analysis for iron samples
6. Analytical quality assurance
• Production of reliable data
• Quality control
7. Data management and reporting
• Statistical analysis
• Interpretation and presentation
Null hypothesis: Presence of wetlands and associated emergent macrophytes
has no effect on the water quality of the site and specifically the iron loading.
Histograms will initially be used to explore the data but statistical testing of this
hypothesis will be dependent on whether the data is parametric or non-
parametric.
Results and Discussion
With my clearly defined monitoring programme, I hope to collect a robust dataset that will allow for
detailed statistical comparison across the site. Using this information I will attempt to create a story of how
water moving through the different stages of the hydrological regime is influenced by wetland
phytoremediation. The final stage of this will be assessing the pollutant loads leaving the Bickershaw site
and comparing them with initial input regions to determine the effectiveness of macrophyte remediation.
Previous studies investigating the phytoremediation capacities of wetlands have suggested that they have
the potential to improve water quality (Williams. 2002) with research also suggesting that they are very
effective at metal removal (Marchand et al., 2010). Therefore, I would stipulate that the null hypothesis
will likely be rejected and that wetlands do have a significant effect on reducing pollutant loading.
However, to confirm my assumptions statistical tests will be required.
Future work on this site should continue the monitoring programme and integrate the findings with
biological and ecological surveys. This is a long-term project with ongoing and planned developments,
assessing the integrative capacity of wetlands to provide a range of ecosystem services would ,therefore,
make for interesting future research and fill knowledge gaps relating to successional changes and
polycultural macrophyte pollutant removal effectiveness.
Figure 2: Fen habitat created by one project. Figure 3: Reed beds at Nevison’s Flash.