Particulate phosphorus removal via wetland filtration: an examination of potential for hypertrophic lake restoration

The use of wetland filtration for phosphorus removal would be tested at Apopka lake, a large, shallow (1.7 m), hypertrophic lake in central Florida receiving agricultural wastewater high in phosphorus from floodplain farms and with a large sedimentary store of available phosphorus. A 21 km2 wetland would be created on the lake's floodplain. Filtrations was expected to be the primary removal mechanism but by creating the wetland on farm sites, the pollution loading associated with those farms would be removed. The Vollenweider input-output loading model was used to predict the effects on lake water quality.