Future Constructed Wetland Research Orientations

This chapter suggests that some of the potential current or future research should be directed at the hydraulic behavior effects of the Constructed Wetland (CW) on the treatment performance for a variety of applications. CWs have been widely used across the world for a range of water treatment applications. Analysis of CW hydraulic performance is often performed by studying water flow patterns or hydraulic retention time distributions that describe the time duration that water parcels remain in wetland cells. The affordable isotopes technology employs the internal elements in CWs to detect the hydraulic flow patterns in real time with no secondary pollution. While the effects of different design variables such as aspect ratio, size of the porous media, and hydraulic loading rate on “short-circuiting” have been evaluated, more work is needed. The rapid growth in published manuscripts addressing constructed wetlands indicates the promise of more papers and research in the near future.