Design principles for engineering wetlands to improve resilience of coupled built and natural water infrastructure

Abstract

Abstract Intensifying climate extremes and the ageing of built infrastructure have prompted the idea of replacing the ageing built infrastructure with natural infrastructure. In this paper, we discuss how a distributed portfolio of smaller wetlands performs compared to a flood control reservoir in terms of flood mitigation. Using a framework of a loosely coupled land surface model with a hydrodynamic model, in the Brazos basin (Texas), we find that (i) two smaller wetlands have more impact on flood mitigation than one double sized wetland, and (ii) creating multiple wetlands (prioritized based on storage) increases flood mitigation. Further, we find that a portfolio of wetlands equivalent to the size of the submergence area of the biggest flood control reservoir (Whitney) in the basin, can create additional flood control storage, equivalent to ∼10% of the total storage of Lake Whitney. Creating a portfolio of wetlands can increase the overall resiliency of the basin.