Assessing Hydrological Performances of Bioretention Cells to Meet the LID Goals

Abstract

BRCs (bioretention cells), one of many low-impact development (LID) practices, are increasingly utilized to lessen the amount of runoff while simultaneously improving the runoff quality. Because the goal of BRCs and LID designs, in general, is to mimic or replicate the pre-development hydrology, it is critical to evaluate the hydrologic and ecologic performances of the BRC facility from the perspective of replicating the pre-development hydrology. The metrics developed in this study were intended to represent the hydrologic regime including the runoff volume control metrics, peak flow frequency exceedance curve, and flow duration curve. We also used a hydrological indicator of T0.5, the fraction of a multi-year period in which the flow exceeds the 0.5-year return period storm to represent the performances regarding downstream ecology. The indicators were compared to their pre-development values to determine how closely they reflected and replicated the pre-development state. A long-term stormwater management model (SWMM) model was developed to examine conditions before and after development and water movement in BRCs. When the BRCs facilities areas are 5% of the entire impervious study area, key findings show that: (1) BRCs have significant runoff volume control performances. (2) The peak flow frequency exceedance curve with BRCs could fully match the pre-development scenario for minor rainfall events compared to the 0.1-year storm. Flow duration curves with BRCs showed that, the frequency, magnitude, and duration of small flows that occurred for more than 90% of the total time closely matched those of pre-development hydrology. (3) T0.5 with BRCs showed significant improvement compared with the value of the area with no BRCs and was close to the pre-development T0.5. The findings presented in this study indicated the significant performance of BRCs in improving downstream ecology.