Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203

Effects of wetland depth and flow rate on residence time

distribution characteristics
Jeff F. Hollanda,∗ , Jay F. Martina , Timothy Granatab , Virginie Bouchardc ,
Martin Quigleyd , Larry Browna
a Department of Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering, The Ohio State University,
590 Woody Hayes Dr., Columbus, OH 43210, USA
b Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science, The Ohio State University,

2070 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA

c School of Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, 2021 Coffey Road, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
d Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, The Ohio State University, 2001 Fyffe Court, Columbus, OH 43210, USA

Received 6 November 2003; received in revised form 25 August 2004; accepted 1 September 2004

Abstract

The residence time distribution (RTD) representing the hydraulics of a wetland is an important tool for modeling and designing
treatment wetlands for optimal constituent removal. To correctly use RTD results, it is necessary to understand the conditions
under which this distribution remains stable. Dye tracer experiments were conducted on a stormwater treatment wetland to
investigate hydrologic factors affecting RTD characteristics. Dye was introduced into the inflow under normal flow conditions
and during simulated storm flows, providing a range of flow rates and water levels. Dye distribution in the outlet was measured
using an in situ fluorometer. Results indicate that flow rates did not have a significant effect on RTD characteristics. The RTDs
normalized for volume and flow demonstrated a greater amount of short-circuiting and a larger mixing scale when water depth
increased, demonstrating that water level can have a direct impact on the RTD of a wetland. This effect suggests that more than
one RTD may be necessary for analyzing a wetland subject to changing water levels. For the wetland in this study, increasing
the water depth elicited a decrease in hydraulic efficiency. Understanding such factors that affect hydraulic efficiency will aid in
the design and management of wetlands.
© 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Hydraulic efficiency; Rhodamine WT; Nonideal flow; Moment analysis; Hydrology; Dye tracer

1. Introduction

∗ Corresponding author. Present Address: 619 12th Avenue, 1.1. Residence time distributions
Huntington, WV 25701, USA. Tel.: +1 304 399 5108/304 523 4272;
fax: +1 614 292 9448. The residence time distribution (RTD) is a tool that
E-mail address: holland.144@osu.edu (J.F. Holland). has advanced the science and engineering of treatment

0925-8574/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ecoleng.2004.09.003
190 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
wetlands. A pulse of a non-reactive tracer chemical
dissolved into a wetland inlet is used to measure an
RTD. In the ideal case, a wetland experiences plug flow,
in which water and its dissolved constituents run uni-
formly and without dispersion from inlet to outlet. If
a tracer pulse is added to an ideal wetland inlet, all of
the tracer will exit at the same time, the residence time.
In real wetlands, flow is nonideal. Nonideal flow com-
prises different flow path lengths, flow velocities, and
mechanisms of diffusion and mixing, causing a distri-
bution of residence times, an RTD (Levenspiel, 1972).
When a tracer pulse is introduced into a nonideal wet-
land, the outflow tracer concentration is an RTD reflect-
ing the dispersive nature of the system. For simplicity,
real wetlands are traditionally, though arguably inac-
curately (Kadlec, 2000), modeled as ideal, plug-flow
systems. RTD analysis has been developed to more
accurately model treatment wetland performance, im-
proving on the ideal wetland model, and leading to
better understanding and design of wetlands.
Many applications of RTD analysis have been ex-
plored in wetland science and engineering, but the
consistency and stability of these have not been well
studied. To strengthen the efficacy of RTD analysis,
its range of utility must be understood more fully.
The present research study explores a range of hydro-
logic conditions that affect RTD stability. By perform-
ing tracer studies during hydrologic manipulation of a
small wetland, this study explores the sensitivity of the
RTD to changing flow rates and water levels. Because
RTD analysis is used to compare the dispersive charac-
teristics of wetlands independent of volume and flow
rates, understanding the influence of variations of vol-
ume and flow rates is needed to improve the application
of RTD analysis.
1.2. Normalization of the RTD
In order to compare RTDs between different
wetlands or dissimilar conditions, each RTD must be
normalized by removing the units of flow rate, system
volume, and tracer mass. A raw RTD can be measured
by adding a pulse of tracer to an aquatic system and then
measuring the resulting outflow tracer concentration as
a function of time. Because the outlet concentration is
a function of the tracer mass and wetland volume, these
factors can be used to normalize the concentration
axis into dimensionless units (Werner and Kadlec,
1996). Increasing the system volume or decreasing the
flow rate lengthens the retention time, thus extending
the raw RTD in time. Conversely, decreasing the vol-
ume or increasing the flow shortens the retention time,
compressing the raw RTD. The horizontal orientation
of the RTD curve is therefore a function of volume and
flow. For this reason, it is common to use volume and
flow to normalize the time axis into dimensionless units
(Fig. 1) (Levenspiel, 1972; AWWARF, 1996). This nor-
malization procedure, essential for comparing RTDs of
systems under different hydrologic conditions, is com-
plicated by pulsed flow, where there may not be one
single system volume or flow rate. Werner and Kadlec
(1996) developed a dynamic normalization procedure
for RTD analysis of pulsed systems. While hydrologic
changes stretch or compress the raw RTD, the normal-
ization procedure removes these effects, isolating the
dispersive and mixing characteristics of the system
(Fig. 1). Dispersive and mixing characteristics are
important to resolve in a treatment wetland because
they affect the system’s treatment performance.
1.3. Hydraulic efficiency
Wetland engineers use RTD analysis to quantify
wetland design characteristics that affect treatment
efficiency. In order to characterize the performance of a
wetland, it is useful to reduce the RTD to a single num-
ber, the hydraulic efficiency. The hydraulic efficiency
represents the ability of a wetland to distribute its flow
uniformly throughout its volume, maximizing contact
time of pollutants in the system and optimizing the
ability to break down these pollutants. Thackston et al.
(1987) introduced the concept of hydraulic efficiency
in wetlands by quantifying the relative position of the
RTD’s centroid. The RTD centroid is a measure of
the average residence time of the RTD, representing
the true retention time of the system. Ideally, the true
retention time of the system is equivalent to the theo-
retical retention time of the system, determined by the
system volume and flow rate. The centroid of an RTD
falls below the theoretical retention time when short-
circuiting causes the loss of effective retention volume
(Fig. 2). The scale of mixing in a wetland also
affects its hydraulic efficiency. Complex systems,
such as wetlands, are often described in equivalent
number of continually stirred tank reactors, or CSTRs
(Levenspiel, 1972; Kadlec and Knight, 1996). A
 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203 191

Fig. 1. The normalization procedure applied to the concentration curve of a tracer. Normalization removes effects of flow rate (Q), volume
(V), and tracer mass from the raw residence time distribution (RTD), producing the same normalized RTD from tracer studies run in similar
systems under dissimilar conditions. Certain characteristics of the tracer curve, such as the centroid and area, become unity after an ideal
normalization.

wetland can be compared to an equivalent volume of
many small CSTRs or a few large CSTRs. Many small
CSTRs in series represent a system with a small mixing
scale, which has a small RTD spread and resembles
plug flow (Fig. 2). As the number of equivalent CSTRs
decreases, the mixing scale and the spread of the RTD
increase (Fig. 2). A large RTD spread is considered
inefficient for a chemical reaction system (Levenspiel,
1972). A metric of hydraulic efficiency may quantify
the short-circuiting, the mixing scale, or a combination
of both (Persson et al., 1999). The measurement of
hydraulic efficiency is a simple and effective method
of characterizing wetlands, identifying factors that
affect treatment wetland performance.
1.4. Factors influencing hydraulic efficiency
Wetland shape affects the RTD and the hydraulic
efficiency. Zones of diminished mixing (ZDM), where
the area of a wetland is not being optimally utilized
192 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
Fig. 2. Conceptual diagram of the effects of mixing scale (A) and short-circuiting (B) on residence time distribution (RTD) characteristics.
for pollutant treatment (Thackston et al., 1987; Kadlec,
1994), lower the hydraulic efficiency by reducing the
effective volume (Fig. 2). Wetland shape and aspect
ratio are important design considerations because they
affect the location and abundance of ZDM (Walker,
1998; Persson et al., 1999). RTD analysis has been used
to design wetland shape to reduce ZDM, optimizing
treatment efficiency (Koskiaho, 2003).
Internal structure can affect flow dynamics and
therefore hydraulic efficiency of a wetland. Aquatic
macrophytes, for example, enhance lateral (Nepf et al.,
1997; Nepf, 1999) and vertical (Nepf and Koch, 1999)
diffusion and flow in a wetland, potentially enhancing
the wetland’s hydraulic efficiency. If patchy vegeta-
tion creates stagnant ZDM, however, the hydraulic ef-
ficiency may decrease (Thackston et al., 1987). The in-
fluence of vegetation on flow patterns indicates that sea-
sons or ecological succession may influence the charac-
teristics of wetland flow. Basin morphology also affects
dispersion and flow paths through a wetland, strongly
influencing the wetland’s RTD (Koskiaho, 2003). The
inlet and outlet locations and their structure also af-
fect hydraulic efficiency. RTD analysis has been used
to optimize inlet (Shilton and Prasad, 1996) and outlet
structures (Konyha et al., 1995) or both (Ta and Brignal,
1998) for maximum treatment efficiency.
Although hydrologic conditions, such as flow rate
and wetland depth, may affect hydraulic efficiency, few
studies have quantified these effects. Natural flood-
ing events in riparian wetlands have caused observ-
able changes in RTD characteristics (Stern et al., 2001).
The water level in a treatment wetland, either caused
by flooding or controlled by wetland design and man-
agement, should similarly affect hydraulic efficiency.
Basin morphology and vegetation, for example, would
likely have different effects relative to different water
depths. Flow rate should also affect RTD characteristics
and hydraulic efficiency. Turbulent diffusion, enhanced
by vegetation and other obstructions, is related to the
Reynolds number and thus flow velocity (Nepf et al.,
 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
1997). Turbulent diffusion may therefore dominate the
diffusive and mixing mechanisms at higher flow rates.
Different mechanisms of flow dispersion would govern
dynamics of low flow. Convective circulation (Oldham
and Sturman, 2001) and diffusion driven by wind or
molecular movement (Kadlec and Knight, 1996; Keller
and Bays, 2000) would likely dominate during long re-
tention times. Because flow rate and depth affect wet-
land hydraulics, studies are needed to quantify their
effects on RTD characteristics.
1.5. Limitations to RTD methods
Understanding depth and flow factors is important
for determining conditions under which an RTD or its
derived hydraulic efficiency metrics can be applied.
Typically, a single RTD is used to characterize a wet-
land, a procedure that assumes that each wetland em-
bodies a single, intrinsically stable RTD. This is a
useful simplification for analyzing the efficiency of a
treatment wetland; however, it remains to be demon-
strated under which circumstances the intrinsic RTD
assumption is valid. A similar uncertainty arises when
a tracer study is performed under pulsed conditions.
Producing a normalized RTD from pulsed conditions
is a practical means of assessing a wetland subject to
storm flow (Werner and Kadlec, 1996). Studies have
not yet demonstrated to what extent such an RTD re-
flects the wetlands local and transient conditions versus
how much it represents the intrinsic state of the wet-
land. In conventional waste treatment facilities, it is
common to run tracer tests at various flow rates and
water levels to assess the system performance under
varying conditions (AWWARF, 1996). A similar pro-
tocol would be beneficial for a treatment wetland if
studies demonstrate a flow or depth effect on wetland
RTD characteristics.
1.6. Purpose of study
The purpose of this study was to investigate the
sensitivity of the normalized RTD to different applied
depths and flow rates. To accomplish this goal, a se-
ries of dye tracer experiments was run on a small con-
structed wetland under controlled flow rates and water
levels. Water level and flow rate were regulated with
adjustable-depth control structures and flow-adjustable
irrigation water.
193
The results of this study were intended to eluci-
date two areas of wetland science and engineering.
First, the results will help determine under which hy-
drologic conditions an RTD remains valid for a wet-
land. Nonideal flow models and hydraulic characteri-
zations will become more robust when the limitations
to their underlying RTDs are understood. This will
lead to better modeling and design of wetlands. Sec-
ond, because depth and flow rate can be controlled
in engineered wetlands (Kadlec and Knight, 1996;
Mitsch and Gosselink, 2000), understanding how hy-
draulic efficiency is affected by these parameters will
influence how treatment wetlands are designed and
managed.
2. Methods
2.1. Site description
This study was performed in the spring and sum-
mer of 2003 on a 250-m2 wetland constructed on the
Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resource Labora-
tory at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio
(Fig. 3). The wetland had three adjacent inlet structures
that discharged water from storm flow, overland flow,
and nursery pad irrigation runoff, and one controlled
outlet structure that discharged to another wetland cell
(discharge structures from Agri Drain Corp.). To simu-
late storm flow, water was added to the overland inflow
structure using a vinyl hose connected to a 5-cm high-
discharge irrigation riser. Flow rates were controlled
by valves on the hose and riser. Although all three
inlets conducted flow during real storm events, sim-
ulated storm events were only conducted through the
overland flow entrance. An adjustable weir was used
to control the depth (i.e. water level) in the wetlands.
To do this, boards with watertight seals were slid into a
track, raising or lowering the weir to a predetermined
level (Fig. 3).
To determine the volume and depth of the wetland
for different flow conditions, wetland topography and
weir positions were surveyed using a total station in
the summer of 2002 (Fig. 3). The survey results were
processed by computer to define a relationship between
water level and wetland volume, using the assumption
that the water level at the outlet is uniform across the
wetland (Fig. 4).
194 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203

2.2. Materials
Each inlet and outlet to the wetland was monitored
by a YSI 6-series sonde (YSI, Inc.), set upstream of the
V-notch weir (Fig. 3). Capable of resolving depth to
±1 mm, the YSI devices monitored flow based on the
measured weir head (ASTM, 2002). The outlet YSI
device had an in situ probe specifically designed to
detect the fluorescence of the dye tracer Rhodamine
WT.
Rhodamine WT was chosen, not only because of
the fluorometer’s compatibility with existing instru-
mentation, but also because Rhodamine WT is a com-
monly used dye tracer in wetland studies (Stern et
al., 2001). Rhodamine WT has a low natural back-
ground interference (Wilson et al., 1986) and accept-
ably low adsorption and degradation rates in small sys-
tems with retention times less than 1 week (Lin et al.,
2003).
2.3. Experimental protocol
To concurrently test the effects of high and low wa-
ter levels and high and low flows on the RTD, 12 ex-
periments were performed over a period of 13 weeks.
The flow rates were difficult to maintain precisely dur-
ing the experiments and, therefore, were quantified by
their averages of 1.2 L s−1 for low flow and 3.2 L s−1
for high flow. The average depth settings were 16.6 cm
for low water level and 39.8 cm for high water level
(Table 1).
Experiment sets were performed in monthly blocks
to balance the seasonal influences on each controlled
condition (Table 1). For the relatively small sample

Fig. 3. Diagram of the setup for the dye tracer experiments at the Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resource Laboratory wetland. The
bathymetric map of the wetland basin has contours every 10 cm, with depths labeled at 30 cm intervals. Depths are in meters relative to survey
station.
 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203 195

Table 1 the study. For example, if one treatment occurred

Experimental settings for the 2003 dye tracer experiments, showing more often in the early part of the season, it would
the average flow rates applied by irrigation water and the wetland
water level settings for each tracer experiment
be impossible to determine whether observed effects
were due to treatment or season. A prescription of
Week begin Applied water First applied Second applied
level (cm) flow (L s−1 ) flow (L s−1 )
weekly changing water levels was randomized over
each monthly block. Two flow rates were assigned
Monthly block 1
19 May 16.6 2.27 0.29
to each week, and their order was chosen randomly.
26 May 39.8 2.08 1.08 Each flow pair was performed on one of each wa-
ter level per month. A protocol was developed for
Monthly block 2
16 June 39.8 1.56 3.33 the paired tracer experiments to run at the first occur-
23 June 16.6 1.51 3.36 rence of each water level each month or to postpone
Monthly block 3
the experiments until the next similar water level in
14 July 16.6 3.36 1.19 the case of inclement weather or technical constraints
2 August 39.8 1.52 5.03 (Table 1).
Preceding each dye tracer experiment, the irriga-
tion flow was set to a predetermined level (Table 1)
size of this experiment, it would have been possi- and allowed to flush the wetland for at least one re-
ble under fully randomized settings to have one set tention time to allow for thermal equalization. Rho-
of experimental prescriptions become climatologically damine WT dye was added in approximate proportion
biased by grouping at the beginning or the end of to wetland volume: approximately 4 g pure Rhodamine

Fig. 4. Volume vs. stage relationship of the experimental wetland based on survey data. This relationship is used to find the volume of the
wetland when the elevation of the water at the outlet (stage) is known.
196 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
WT for the low water level and 10 g for high water
level. Dye was added to the inlet by slowly pouring
15 L of a mixture of dye and wetland water into the
overland flow structure (Fig. 3). At the outlet, the YSI
sensor equipped with the Rhodamine probe (Fig. 3)
monitored the dye concentration and weir head every
5 min.
2.4. Data analysis
Although each dye tracer experiment was run un-
der relatively steady conditions, each RTD had to be
normalized in order to compare between conditions of
different flow rates and system volumes. Werner and
Kadlec (1996) proposed normalizing the RTD con-
tinuously by flow rate and by system volume, where
time on the abscissa is replaced by dimensionless flow-
weighted time, φ:

t
Q(t  ) 
φ= dt (1)

t0 V (t )
where t is the time, t is a dummy variable of integra-
tion, t0 the time of dye delivery, Q(t) the outflow rate,
and V(t) the wetland volume. Because the theoretical
retention time for a system with steady flow occurs at
φ = 1, the parameter φ can be thought of as the num-
ber of theoretical retention times. Werner and Kadlec
(1996) defined φ under the special case where V(t) is
assumed to be a constant: Vsys . In the present study, the
volume-to-stage (i.e. water level) relationship (Fig. 4)
enabled the calculation of volume as a function of time,
V(t), providing a more accurate description of the sys-
tem volume. The dimensionless RTD function, C (φ),
is defined as
C(φ)V (φ)
C (φ) = (2)
M
where C(φ) is the outflow concentration, V(φ) the sys-
tem volume, both functions of flow-weighted time, and
M the mass of the tracer added to the system (Werner
and Kadlec, 1996). Although tracer degradation should
be avoided, some loss of tracer is inevitable. In this
study, this loss was corrected for by substituting the
exit mass into Eq. (2):

∞
Mout = Q(t)C(t) dt (3)
0 many ways of measuring tracer spread (Persson et al.,
where Mout is the amount of tracer to exit the wetland
(Kadlec and Knight, 1996). The ratio of the exit mass,
Mout , to the added mass, M, was calculated to determine
the dye recovery. For consistency in this study, each
RTD and corresponding Mout was analyzed over the
interval 0 <φ <2.
Moments of the dimensionless RTD functions were
used as a basis for calculating the hydraulic efficiency
(Kadlec and Knight, 1996). The moments of the nor-
malized RTD functions are defined as

∞
M0∗ = C (φ) dφ (4)
0

∞
M1∗ = φC (φ) dφ (5)
0

∞
M2∗ = (φ − M1∗ )2 C (φ) dφ (6)
0
The zeroth moment of the normalized RTD, M0∗ , is
equivalent to the fraction of the mass of the dye recov-
ered. With tracer loss corrected, M0∗ is always unity.
When M0∗ = 1, the first moment, M1∗ , is the centroid
of the RTD. The second moment, M2∗ , is the variance, or
σ 2 , of the RTD, which accounts for the spread of the dye
over time. In theory, M1∗ = 1 for a normalized RTD of a
conservative tracer in a system with no dead zones, and
M2∗ = 0 during plug flow (Werner and Kadlec, 1996).
Consequently, the deviation from the ideal case can be
used to quantify the hydraulic efficiency.
Different metrics of hydraulic efficiency were cal-
culated and compared in this study. Thackston et al.
(1987) defined hydraulic efficiency as the ratio of the
actual and theoretical retention time:
t̄
λt = = M1∗ (7)
T
where λt is the hydraulic efficiency proposed by
Thackston et al. (1987), t̄ the system’s true retention
time, equivalent to the RTD centroid, and T the theo-
retical retention time determined by the surveyed vol-
ume and measured flow. For a normalized RTD, T = 1,
and it follows that λt is the centroid of the normalized
RTD. When flow or volume varies during the tracer
experiment, the steady-state parameters t̄ and T cannot
be directly calculated, but M1∗ can be computed to de-
termine λt (Eq. (7)). Tracer spread was also used as a
measurement of hydraulic efficiency. While there are
 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
1999), a normalized form of the variance was used in
this study. The variance of the RTD, M2∗ , describes the
scale of mixing of the system. If the effective volume
of the system is compromised by short-circuiting, i.e.
λt < 1, the variance may be normalized by the square
of the reduced centroid (Kadlec and Knight, 1996):
M2∗
σθ2 = (8)
λ2t
where σθ2 is the normalized system variance, a metric of
the RTD spread. If a system is modeled with continu-
ally stirred tank reactors (CSTRs) in series, the mixing
scale of the RTD is quantified by σθ2 = N −1 , where N is
the theoretical number of CSTRs (Kadlec and Knight,
1996). A synthesized version of hydraulic efficiency,
incorporating both effects of short-circuiting and mix-
ing scale, was also calculated:
   
1 t̄ t̄ − tp tp
λp = λt 1 − = 1− = = tp∗ (9)
N T t̄ T straints also limited the quality of data. The Rho-
where λp is the hydraulic efficiency proposed by
Persson et al. (1999), N the equivalent number of
CSTRs in series, tp the time of peak concentration, and
tp∗ the normalized time of peak concentration. This con-
cept of hydraulic efficiency is simplified algebraically
by the assumption that the RTD spread can be modeled
by series of CSTRs.
Minimum travel time was also calculated as a char-
acteristic of the RTD that identifies short-circuiting.
The minimum travel time, tm , was defined as the short-
est normalized time of travel from the inlet to outlet,
determined by the fastest flow path through the wet-
land. Theoretically, this is the time elapsed between
the introduction of dye at the inlet and the detection of
dye at the outlet. However, background fluctuations in
fluorescence made the exact time of the initial signal in
the outlet difficult to determine. Therefore, a minimum
travel time was defined arbitrarily as the normalized
time of the last measurement before the measured con-
centration reached 3% of the peak concentration. The
time identified with this method matched the first rise
of the RTD curve.
Because experiments were conducted in paired
combinations of flow rates, two-sided, paired t-tests
were used to statistically compare how flow rates af-
fected the RTD characteristics. This yielded five de-
grees of freedom from the 12 tracer experiments. Two-
197
sided, pooled t-tests were used to compare the effects
of water level on RTD statistics, yielding 11 degrees of
freedom for this test. All tests were used to determine
with a 95% confidence level whether the differences of
the mean RTD characteristics, λt, λp , tm , and σθ2 were
nonzero.
2.5. Natural events
Dye tracers were also used to measure natural,
pulsed-flow events in the wetland. Using similar meth-
ods to the experiments with artificially simulated flow,
dye was added to the storm-flow wetland inlet (Fig. 3)
immediately preceding a large storm event and out-
flow measurements and data analyses were made as
before. Because the storm-flow tracer experiments re-
lied on multiple storm events to complete the RTD
curve, their long and unpredictable time frame ex-
cluded the possibility of replication. Technical con-
damine probe introduced spiked noise under high-
turbidity conditions. The extreme spikes (i.e. out-
liers) were problematic in the high water level ex-
periment and were replaced by the surrounding mean
values, degrading the signal and thus the data qual-
ity. As a result of data noise and lack of replica-
tion, natural events were not statistically compared
to flows created using irrigation water. Instead, the
results from the natural tracer experiments are pre-
sented as a subjective means of comparing and con-
trasting naturally pulsed events to artificially controlled
flooding.
3. Results
The controlled depth varied by factor of 2.4 between
treatments and the average low and high flow rates var-
ied by a similar factor of 2.7 (Table 1). Dye recovery for
all experiments ranged from 75 to 95% with an average
of 84%. There were no consistent differences between
the RTD plots at different flow rates. None of the pa-
rameters for hydraulic efficiency differed significantly
between high and low flow rates (Fig. 5): λt varied
from 0.51 at low flow to 0.53 at high flow (P = 0.53),
λp changed from 0.22 at low flow to 0.25 at high flow
(P = 0.30), tm was 0.11 at low flow and 0.12 at high
flow (P = 0.81), and σθ2 was 0.65 for low flow and 0.55
198 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203

Fig. 5. Statistics of the residence time distribution (RTD) characteristics under differing flow rates and depths. Comparisons are made between
flow rates (averaged over two water levels) and water levels (averaged over two flow rates) (mean ± standard error) for (A) peak concentration
time, (B) minimum dye travel time, (C) RTD centroid (first moment), and (D) normalized variance of the RTD.

for high flow (P = 0.053); each of these measurements Table 2

is unitless. RTD statistics of the dye tracer experiments run at low and high water
level during natural storm events
The RTDs compared between high and low wa-
ter levels appeared distinctively different. Whereas the Statistics Low water level High water level
RTD of the low water level was unimodal, the RTD for λp 0.44 0.083
the high water level was usually bimodal, with the first λt 0.81 0.31
tm 0.41 0.026
peak typically higher and narrower than the main peak σθ2 0.23 0.41
of the low water level RTD (Fig. 6). These differences
were reflected in the RTD statistics (Fig. 5). The mean
minimum travel time, tm , was 0.15 for the low water and 0.49 for the high water level but this difference was
level and 0.077 for the high water level, a difference that not significant (P = 0.088). Each of these measurements
was statistically significant (P = 0.00012). The time to of hydraulic efficiency is unitless.
peak concentration of the RTD curve, λp , occurred at Two natural dye tracers were run during natural
the mean φ value of 0.29 during the low water level storm flow, one at high water level and one at low wa-
and 0.19 during the high water level, which also rep- ter level. The RTDs of the natural dye tracers (Fig. 7)
resents a statistically significant difference (P = 0.041). appeared different from those of the simulated storm
The mean RTD spread, or σθ2 , which was 0.47 at low flows (Fig. 6), though they showed similar, general
water level and 0.73 at high water level, changed sig- trends. For natural flow events, the RTD for the high
nificantly in response to water level (P = 0.0089). The water level had lower values of λt, λp , tm , and a larger σθ2
mean RTD centroid, λt , was 0.55 for the low water level compared to the RTD of the low water level (Table 2).
 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
Fig. 6. Comparison of two representative residence time distribution (RTD) curves run at different water levels.
4. Discussion
4.1. RTD sensitivity to hydrologic influences
The results of this study indicate that the RTD of a
wetland is sensitive to changes in water depth, but not
significantly sensitive to changes in flow rate. If this
result is characteristic of wetlands in general, then it in-
dicates that a change in wetland depth by a factor of 2.4
is enough to elicit a significant change in RTD charac-
teristics. If wetland management or hydrologic factors
cause depth changes of a similar magnitude, more than
one RTD will be needed for an appropriate hydraulic
characterization. The results of this study also indicate
that RTD characteristics may not change significantly
when flows vary by up to a factor 2.7. Flow normaliza-
tion of an RTD would be robust to this magnitude of
change. The RTD normalization proposed by Werner
and Kadlec (1996) should work appropriately for mod-
erately varying flow rates, during which the wetland’s
water level, and therefore its volume, does not change
appreciably. Werner and Kadlec (1996) acknowledged
199
that volumetric fluctuations were problematic in their
procedure. Determining Vsys , the average system vol-
ume, a step necessary for normalization, is not straight-
forward under large volumetric fluctuations. This prob-
lem may be avoided by defining volume as a function of
time, V(t), as the present study has done. Unfortunately,
the procedure used to determine this functional rela-
tionship would be impractical for many larger wetlands
that cannot be accurately or cost-effectively surveyed.
Because volume is a function of depth (Fig. 4), care
should be taken in interpreting an RTD during large
volumetric fluctuations, regardless of how the volume
is calculated.
Although this study demonstrates no significant ef-
fect of flow rate on the RTD, the limits must be con-
sidered under which this observation is made. Natural
flow rates may vary by magnitudes greater than those
tested in this experiment. Depth fluctuations, on the
other hand, are more likely to remain within the range
tested in this study. It is therefore expected that flow
effects on the RTD may play a greater role under natu-
rally pulsed conditions. In this study, not enough tracers
200 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
Fig. 7. Residence time distribution of a dye tracer during natural, pulsed flow for low water level (A) and high water level (B).
were run under natural conditions to test this conjec-
ture. The mechanisms of dispersion that may dominate
at low flow between pulsed events, such as convective,
molecular, and wind-driven diffusion, are difficult to
isolate and measure with RTD analysis because of the
long retention times involved. Over very long retention
times, tracers tend to degrade (Lin et al., 2003). The
longer necessary time periods for low-flow tracer ex-
periments under controlled conditions require a longer
study period and introduce a higher possibility of inter-
ference from inclement weather and other confounding
factors. Such further experimentation was not possible
in present study’s time frame.
4.2. Design and management implications
The depth effect on hydraulic efficiency observed
in this study may be important when wetland design
and management are considered. The λt parameter de-
creased by 12% due to the controlled depth increase.
This reduction in RTD centroid, although not statis-
tically significant, indicated short-circuiting. This ob-
servation is supported by a significant 49% increase
of the normalized travel time of the fastest flow path,
tm , during the same depth increase. The RTD spread,
σθ2 , increased by 57% as depth increased, representing
a decrease in hydraulic efficiency. In response to in-
creased depth, the hydraulic efficiency measured by λp
decreased by 35%. All the parameters expressing hy-
draulic efficiency exhibit lower efficiency for the higher
water levels. This indicates that less-efficient flow pat-
terns were prevalent at greater water depths. Although
the depth effect on hydraulic efficiency affects the per-
formance of a treatment wetland, this effect must be
weighed against other factors. The depth of a treat-
ment wetland is an important design consideration be-
cause of its effect on the retention time (Kadlec and
Knight, 1996), the ecology (Batzer and Resh, 1992;
Mitsch and Gosselink, 2000), and the hydrologic ef-
fectiveness, a measure of compliance with the mini-
mum prescribed retention time in a stormwater treat-
ment wetland (Wong and Somes, 1995). If the results of
 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
this study are representative of other wetlands, the ef-
fect of depth on hydraulic efficiency should be a factor
considered during wetland design and management.
The effect of flow rate on hydraulic efficiency, in
contrast to depth, appears to be minimal within the
range tested in this study. Each of the hydraulic ef-
ficiency parameters exhibited smaller changes due to
flow rate than due to depth, and none of these changes
were statistically significant. This occurred in spite of
the change in flow by a factor of 2.7, which was slightly
greater than the factor of depth change, 2.4. Of all the
parameters measured, σθ2 exhibited the greatest change
due to flow rate. The RTD spread, σθ2 , decreased by
15% due to an increase in flow rate. Although this indi-
cates an increase in hydraulic efficiency at higher flow
rate, this difference could be statistically due to ran-
dom chance. The relationship between flow rate and
retention time is expected to have a much greater influ-
ence on treatment efficiency (Kadlec and Knight, 1996)
than the relationship between flow rate and hydraulic
efficiency.
4.3. Assessment of hydraulic efficiency metrics
The results of this study demonstrate that different
hydraulic efficiency metrics can respond uniquely to
the same treatment. In response to a depth increase,
a measure of short-circuiting, λt , decreased by 12%,
whereas a measure of mixing scale, σθ2 , increased by
57%. The metric λp , a combination of mixing scale
and short-circuiting, decreased under the same condi-
tions by 35%. Although each of these observations in-
dicates a decrease in hydraulic efficiency, there is not
one consistent measurement of hydraulic efficiency to
report. Each metric of hydraulic efficiency used in this
study has unique implications on treatment effective-
ness. Future researchers may therefore consider using
more than just one measurement of hydraulic efficiency
when assessing a wetland.
In general, short-circuiting is never desirable in a
treatment wetland because treatment area is effectively
lost (Thackston et al., 1987; Kadlec, 1994). This may
not be of concern in wetland ecology, but it is of prac-
tical concern regarding the performance of a treatment
wetland. The centroid of the normalized RTD, λt , rep-
resents the fraction of the wetland that is not short-
circuited. Short-circuiting, quantified by λt , is therefore
an unquestionably important factor to be resolved from
201
RTD analysis. The concept of short-circuiting can be
used in this study to show that 55% (λt = 0.55) of the
wetland volume is effectively being used at low water
level, but only 49% (λt = 0.49) is effectively used at
high water level (Fig. 5C), representing a relative 12%
loss of effective treatment wetland volume at high wa-
ter level. The ability to quantitatively describe wetland
effectiveness makes λt an important factor to analyze
treatment wetlands.
Plug-flow efficiency (Ta and Brignal, 1998), based
on the RTD spread, or σθ2 , cannot easily be used to
quantify treatment efficiency, but it is a quantitative
description of the system’s mixing scale. The recipro-
cal of σθ2 is a measure of the equivalent number, N,
of CSTRs in series (Kadlec and Knight, 1996). In this
manner, the low water level of this study can be com-
pared to a series of N = 2.1 CSTRs and the high water
level to a series of N = 1.4 CSTRs. The possible mix-
ing scale varies between fully mixed flow at N = 1 and
unmixed plug flow at N = ∞. Changes in mixing scale,
however, do not directly translate into changes in treat-
ment efficiency. It can be shown for all reaction rates
of first-order kinetics or greater that reaction comple-
tion is maximized with plug flow, σθ2 = 0. Any finite
scale of mixing (σθ2 > 0) reduces the treatment effi-
ciency unless the reaction follows zero-order kinetics,
in which case plug flow and mixed flow have equiv-
alent reaction completions (Levenspiel, 1972; Lawler
and Benjamin, in press). There are other benefits to a
high σθ2 value, however, that may negate the theoret-
ical loss of reaction completion. For example, mixed
flow can stabilize and equalize pulsed inputs by dilut-
ing potentially dangerous pollutant inputs (Lawler and
Benjamin, in press). Therefore, in some circumstances,
mixing is at most desirable, or at least neutral, even
though some concepts of hydraulic efficiency under-
value this effect. Any change in treatment performance
due to mixing scale therefore cannot be quantified by σθ2
alone.
Both aspects of hydraulic efficiency, the measure-
ment of mixing scale and the measurement of short-
circuiting, are important for hydraulic characteriza-
tion. The synthesis of these two concepts proposed
by Persson et al. (1999), though convenient to calcu-
late, is not universally applicable. Not only is some
important information lost, but also reducing the cal-
culation to identifying one single point on the RTD,
the peak concentration time, may make this proce-
202 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
dure susceptible to error, especially when the RTD
is not smooth (Fig. 7). The hydraulic efficiency met-
ric λp is desirable when the RTD’s peak concentra-
tion is the most cost-effective characteristic of the
tracer study to calculate. Similarly, the minimum travel
time, tm , which can be affected by both mixing scale
and short-circuiting, is a measurement that should not
stand alone. Because of the different implications of
each of these aspects of hydraulic efficiency, future re-
searchers may want to consider these effects separately,
as this and other studies (Ta and Brignal, 1998) have
done.
4.4. Limitations of this study
Although the number of repetitions in this experi-
ment is large compared to many RTD studies of wet-
lands, sample size for this experiment was nonethe-
less small in a statistical sense. The possibility can-
not be rejected that the differences in flow rate in
this experiment do have some effect on the RTD. The
different dispersal effects discussed earlier may not
have been evident under the flow rates used in this
experiment.
The irrigation water, with an average temperature
of 14 ◦ C, was cooler than the average ambient summer
wetland water temperature of 20 ◦ C, and the average
summer storm flow temperature of 23 ◦ C. Although
the initial flushing of the wetland minimized this tem-
perature difference between the irrigation water and
previous water in the wetland, the conditions may not
have been representative of what would occur during a
natural storm. This effect was subjectively confirmed
by thermal stratification made visible by the dye tracer.
The same stratification was not visible when dye was
added during natural storm events with comparatively
warmer runoff. The centroids for all tracer tests using
irrigation water were less than unity, indicating short-
circuiting was occurring under all conditions (Fig. 5C).
Thermal stratification probably accounted for some of
this short-circuiting. The remaining short-circuiting is
likely a result of the proximity of the inlet to the out-
let (Fig. 3). Because of the factors unique to this ex-
perimental setup, these results cannot necessarily be
extrapolated to natural flow conditions. The naturally
run tracer studies (Fig. 7) confirm this by having no-
ticeably different RTD characteristics (Table 2) than
the controlled studies (Fig. 5). Ideally, an experiment
comparing different water levels should be run under
fully natural flow conditions. Unfortunately, such con-
ditions are difficult to control and replicate. Because
controlled RTD comparisons are needed for wetland
studies, the concerns caused by using irrigation water
were outweighed by the control advantage of the ex-
perimental design.
Data from the natural dye tracer studies (Table 2)
appear to support the general trends of the controlled
study (Fig. 5) in response to depth change, but there
are many factors that complicate this interpretation. For
example, the three inlets (Fig. 3) all conveyed runoff
during storm events, whereas only one inlet conducted
water during the artificial storm events. When there are
multiple inlets, each inlet’s flow contribution to the final
RTD is weighted by its proportion of flow conducted
(Keller and Bays, 2000). For example, the tracer added
during low water level to the storm flow inlet may have
been initially circumvented by flow from the nursery in-
let, which was flowing strongly before the storm event.
This likely increased the measured centroid and mini-
mum travel time, and in doing so could have artificially
inflated other measurements of hydraulic efficiency. It
was also clear from the noise in the high water level
natural event that there may have been some instru-
mentation problems (Fig. 7) since the time series was
extremely noisy.
5. Conclusion
This study demonstrates that changing water levels
can significantly affect the flow characteristics through
a wetland. The magnitude of depth change in this study,
a factor of 2.4, sets a baseline for identifying hydrologic
changes that are likely to affect the RTD. This study
also indicates that minor fluctuations in flow rate, at
least within the factor of 2.7 tested in this study, may
not significantly affect the RTD. This supports analy-
sis of normalized RTDs across various flow rates, such
as Werner and Kadlec’s (1996) RTD characterization
method for pulsed-flow systems. Future researchers
may wish to further investigate factors affecting RTD
stability, such as the hydrologic influences investigated
in this study.
This study also indicates that water depth can af-
fect hydraulic efficiency. The observed 57% increase
in RTD spread and 12% loss of effective wetland
 J.F. Holland et al. / Ecological Engineering 23 (2004) 189–203
volume during a 140% increase in depth would cause a
relatively small detriment to treatment performance.
The longer retention time created by the depth in-
crease, however, may result in a relatively larger ben-
efit to treatment performance. Although the depth ef-
fect on hydraulic efficiency may be small, it should
be weighed with other factors in wetland design and
management. For example, measures to increase hy-
draulic efficiency, such as constructed baffles (Ta and
Brignal, 1998), may have higher material costs in a
deeper wetland, but their greater need would offset their
higher cost. Future experiments should test whether
this depth effect on hydraulic efficiency is consistent
under different conditions and in different wetlands.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Noel Cressie for his as-
sistance and advice. We are also appreciative of the
design and construction work done by Dan Gill, Tim
Salzman, and Alex Daughtery. For the technical as-
sistance of Chris Gecik, Kevin Duemmel, and Carl
Cooper, we are greatly indebted. Many thanks also go
to Mark Schmittgen for his assistance on the farm, to
Chris Keller for his advice on using dye tracers, and to
Mark Benjamin for supplying a draft of his publication
in press. This study would not have been possible with-
out funding from the Ohio Agricultural and Research
Development Center and generous donations from Agri
Drain Corporation.
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