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© IWA Publishing 2017 Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017

1

Influence of vegetation type and temperature on

the performance of constructed wetlands for
nutrient
removal
Hui Zhu, Qing-wei Zhou, Bai-xing Yan, Yin-xiu Liang, Xiang-fei
Yu, Yoram Gerchman and Xian-wei Cheng

ABSTRACT

In this study, the influence of vegetation type and environmental temperature on performance of Hui Zhu
Qing-wei Zhou
CWs was investigated. Results of vegetation types indicated that the removal of most nutrients in
Bai-xing Yan (corresponding author)
polyculture was greater than those in monoculture and unplanted control. The greatest removal Yin-xiu Liang
Xiang-fei Yu
percentages of NH4þ-N, TN and TP in polyculture were 98.7%, 98.5%, and 92.6%, respectively. In Xian-wei Cheng
Key Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and
Experiment of different temperatures, the removal percentages of NHþ4 -N, NO—3 -N, TN and TP in Environment,
all Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology,
Chinese Academy of Sciences,
CWs tended to decrease by the decline of temperature. Especially, a sharp decline in the removal Changchun 130102,
China
percentages of NO3—-N (decreased by above 13.8%) and TN (decreased by above 7.9%) of all CWs
E-mail: yanbx@neigae.ac.cn
was
Qing-wei Zhou
observed at low temperature (average temperature of 8.9 ◦C). Overall, the performance of CWs Yin-xiu Liang
was Xiang-fei Yu
Xian-wei Cheng
obviously influenced by temperature, and the polyculture still showed best performance in the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,

removal of nitrogen when the average temperature dropped to 19.8 ◦C. Additionally, the variations Beijing 100039,
China
of urease activities in rhizosphere soil tended to decrease with the decreasing temperature.
Yoram Gerchman
Overall, a
University of Haifa-Oranim Kiryat
substantial enhancement for nitrogen and TP removal in polyculture (Canna indica þ Lythrum Tivon, 36006,
Israel
salicaria) was observed. In conclusion, CW cultivated with polyculture was a good strategy for
enhancing nutrient removal when temperature was above 19.8 ◦C.
Key words | constructed wetlands, domestic sewage, temperature, urease activities,
vegetation types

INTRODUCTION

The enrichment of surface water with nutrients from munici-

processes, especially those occurring around the rhizo-
pal wastewater can strongly affect water quality and lead to
sphere of vegetation (Stottmeister et al. ). Hence, CWs with
process of eutrophication of water bodies (Karczmarczyk
vegetation may have higher removal efficiency of nutri-
et al.  ). In addition, the consumption of water rich in ents than those without vegetation (Chen et al. 2015).
nitrates can cause the disease known as blue baby syndrome
Accordingly, to ensure the efficient removal of nutrients,
(nitrate competition for oxygen in the blood), stomach pro-
vegetation species selection should be taken into consider-
blems in adults and even cancer (Magalhaes et al. ).
ation (Zheng et al. ). It has been reported that canna
Therefore, the removal of nitrogen and phosphorus from
(Canna indica) and purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)
wastewater is one of the top priority concerns (Hong et al.
have been widely used to improve the quality of water
). The nutrients treatment has been a difficult issue in
environment due to their high nutrient removal efficiency
developing countries. CWs, as an inexpensive, effective
and aesthetic value (Uveges et al. ; Zhang et al. ).
and reliable water treatment technology, have been widely
Therefore, Canna indica and Lythrum salicaria may serve
used for nutrient removal. In CWs, the main removal mech-
as efficient plant species in CWs.
anism of nutrient has been clearly identified in recent years
Whether polyculture has a significant improvement in
(Van de Moortel et al. ). The efficient removal of nutri-
the treatment efficiency of CWs is still a controversial pro-
ents can be achieved through a series of biotic and abiotic
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2 H. Zhu et al. | The effect of vegetation and temperature on constructed wetlands Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017

blem. Some studies indicated that polyculture

doi: 10.2166/wst.2017.556
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3
outperformed monoculture, while others showed varied
results. For example, Liang et al. () has reported that
system functioning benefited from higher plant diversity,
and Coleman et al. () also proved that to mix
different plants can enhance the efficiency of CWs.
However, Fraser et al. (2016) claimed that the polyculture had
no sig-
nificant improvement on the performance of CWs.
Therefore, further studies are necessary to explore the differ-
ences between monoculture and polyculture, and to identify
the driving mechanisms, thereby assessing whether polycul-
ture wetland is a good strategy for enhancing nutrient
treatment. The decreasing temperature would suppress the
nutrient removal efficiency of CWs as proved by previous
studies (Yan & Xu 2016), but how would CWs with specific
design (e.g., polyculture) perform under decreasing
tempera-
ture remains unclear. Therefore, relative studies are
necessary to be conducted so as to clarify the feasibility of
improving winter performance of CWs by optimizing the
vegetation. Numerous studies showed that nutrient removal
in CWs was mainly attributed to the metabolism of microbes
and enzyme activities (Yang et al 2017). However, the rate of
biological decomposition may be limited by a variety of
environmental variables, such as dissolved oxygen and
temperature (Chang et al 2013). Especially, temperature is
considered as one of the dominant factors affecting the
growth and activity of microbes. For example, the metab-
olism and activities of nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria
can be significantly affected by temperature and tend to
decrease when the temperature decreases to below 10 ◦C;
nitrifying and denitrification could almost stop completely
when the temperature is below 6 ◦C (Yang & Xu 2016). There-
fore, understanding how the microbial activities vary with
the temperature variations is critical for both exploring the
mechanism of nutrient removal variation under a changing
environment and creating effective CWs. However, avail-
able studies rarely focused on the change of microbial
activities (e.g., urease activity) in CWs under declined
temperatures.
Due to the lack of knowledge as addressed above, four
bench-scale CWs were established for nutrient removal in
the present study. CWs were cultivated with polyculture
(Canna indica þ Lythrum salicaria), Canna indica monocul-
ture, Lythrum salicaria monoculture and unplanted control,
respectively. The specific objectives of this study were: 1) to
examine the differences in the treatment performance
among unplanted control, monoculture and polyculture; 2)
and to clarify the variations of removal efficiencies and rhi-
zospheric microbial activity in CWs with the decreasing
environmental temperature (average temperature from
© IWA Publishing 2017 Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017
25.5 to 8.9 ◦C). This study could provide useful information
for enhancing the efficiency of CWs, as well as future design,
application, and operation management of CWs in cold
regions like Northeast China.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
Experimental setup
Four batch flow CWs with identical dimensions (described
below) were established in the Northeast Institute of
Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Changchun, China. This geographical region belongs to
north temperate zone continental climate with four distinct
seasons. The schematic diagram of CWs is illustrated in
Figure 1. They were rectangular tanks made of Plexiglas,
with dimensions of 0.98 m long, 0.56 m wide and 0.5 m
deep. Each CW included an inlet section (0.16 m long),
operating section (0.66 m long), and outlet section (0.16 m
long). Three sampling ports (a distance of 10 cm from
bottom) were evenly distributed horizontally along the oper-
ating section to allow for the collection of effluent water
samples. The inlet and outlet section were filled with
gravel with a diameter of 24.8 ± 5.6 mm at a thickness of
40 cm. The gravel (a diameter of 15.0 ± 2.0 mm) as substrate
were placed in the operating section with a thickness of
40 cm, and a 10-cm depth layer of typical black soil in
Northeast China was placed on top of the substrate layer.
Two plant species, Canna indica and Lythrum salicaria,
were used in this study. Canna indica is not an original
native species in Northeast China, however, it has been
proved to be safe for local ecosystems and has been already
used in many landscape gardening and/or ecological engin-
eering in Northeast China (Liang et al 2017). Lythrum
salicaria is a commonly observed native plant species in
Northeast China (Wang et al 2006). The vegetations of four
CWs were described as follows: W1 was cultivated
without vegetation (unplanted control); W2 was cultivated
with Canna indica monoculture; W3 was cultivated with
Lythrum salicaria monoculture; W4 was cultivated with
50% of Canna indica and 50% of Lythrum salicaria (poly-
culture). All CWs with vegetation were cultivated at a
density of 24 seedlings m—2. Seedlings of Lythrum salicaria
and Canna indica were initially collected from the nature
wetlands in Sanjiang Plain and the Beihu Park in Chang-
chun, China, respectively in 2016. Seedlings of both plants
were grown in hydroponic solution until they were big
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3 H. Zhu et al. | The effect of vegetation and temperature on constructed wetlands Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017

Figure 1 | Diagram of the experimental unit.

enough (approximately 30 cm height) to be transplanted

tested under three temperature regimes, T1 (average of
into CWs.
25.5 ◦C), T2 (average of 19.8 ◦C), and T3 (average of
8.9 ◦C), as illustrated in Figure 2.
Experimental operation

Sample collection
The synthetic wastewater was prepared by dissolving
NH4Cl, KNO3, KH2PO4, CaCl2, and MgSO4 in tap water.
Samples of wastewater were collected daily during all the
The CWs were operated intermittently and the hydraulic
experiments. Three water samples were collected from
retention time (HRT) was 7 days for all experiments. Each
each respective sampling port in each CW, and were
wetland system was fed with 60 L synthetic wastewater on
mixed together to form a composite water sample.
Day 1 of each operation cycle. The formal experiments
were carried out after the vegetation had grown for 30
days within each respective CW for acclimation. Exper-
iment 1 was designed to test the effect of vegetation types
on CW efficiency. While, Experiment 2 was designed to
highlight the correlations between CW performance and
variations in temperature. The compositions of the synthetic
wastewater employed in Experiment 1 and 2 were listed in
Table 1. In Experiment 2, performance of CWs were

Table 1 | Composition of the synthetic wastewater employed in Experiment 1 and 2

Nutrients concentrations (mg/L)

—
Experiment NHþ4 -N NO - TN TP pH
3

Experiment 1 27.5 30.1 68.0 6.7 6.67

Experiment 2 27.5 30.3 68.9 8.5 6.78 Figure 2 | Variations in the daily environmental temperatures of the three temperature
regimes tested in Experiment 2.
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4 H. Zhu et al. | The effect of vegetation and temperature on constructed wetlands Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017

Rhizosphere soil samples were collected from each CW at

each temperature regime during Experiment 2 to investigate
the influence of temperature on microbial activity. Five rhi-
zosphere soil samples were collected from the four corners
and the center of each CW, and were then mixed together
to form a composite sample. After removing the roots and
macrofauna, field-moist samples were sieved (<2 mm), and
immediately placed in separate plastic Ziploc bags. Samples
were stored at 4 ◦C for further analyzing of urease activity.
Analytical methods
The parameters, such as NH4þ-N, NO—3 -N, TN and TP,
were
measured using an automatic chemical analyzer (Mode
Smartchem 200, Italy) after corresponding standard pre-
treatment and reagent addition according to Standard
Methods (Ju et al 2014). Recent study had indicated that enzymes
were responsive to the intensity and direction of
biological activities in CWs (Huang et al 2012). Urease
activity was proved to be related to the nitrogen removal
in CWs (Huang et al 2012). Hence, urease activity was
selected as an indicator to investigate the microbial activity
in CWs under different temperature regimes. Urease activity
was measured by incubating 5 g soil with 10 mL of 10% urea
solution and 20 mL of citrate buffer (pH at 6.7) for 24 h at
37 ◦C. The formation of ammonium was determined spec-
trophotometrically at 578 nm by using the automatic
chemical analyzer (TU-1901, China) and the activity was
expressed as mg NH4þ-N g—1 soil, as described by Zhou
et al (2017). SPSS 19.0 (IBM Corporation, 2012, USA) stat-
istical package for Windows was used for data analysis.
Linear regressions between the urease activity and nitrogen
removal percentages were carried out with Pearson bivari-
ate correlations. All figures were prepared using the Origin
9.0 statistical packages.
RESULT
Effect of vegetation types on efficiency of CWs
As illustrated in Figure 3, the performance of CWs with
different vegetation types along HRT was investigated. In
general, the removal percentages of NHþ4 -N increased
with
the extension of HRT, and the greatest removal percentages
were observed on Day 7 in all CWs. On Day 7, the removal

Figure 3 | Removal efficiencies of CWs cultivated with different plant species; HRT represents hydraulic retention time; W1: unplanted control, W2: Monoculture (Canna indica), W3:
Monoculture (Lythrum salicaria), W4: Polyculture (Canna indica þ Lythrum salicaria).
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5 H. Zhu et al. | The effect of vegetation and temperature on constructed wetlands Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017

percentages of NHþ4 -N in W1, W2, W3 and W4 were

removal were enhanced by the polyculture (Canna indica
88.4%, 92.8%, 95.62% and 98.7%, respectively.
and Lythrum salicaria) as compared to the monoculture cul-
Meanwhile, the
ture and unplanted control, demonstrating that the
polyculture showed better removal efficiency as compared
polyculture can be used in CWs for improving the treatment
to monoculture or unplanted control, and it took only 5
of nutrient.
days to reach approximately 98.7% of the NHþ4 -N
removal
Effect of temperature on CWs
percentage. Analogously, the polyculture also showed
better performance for TN removal as compared to W1,
W2 and W3. The removal percentage of TN in W4 was Effect of temperature on removal efficiency of CWs
98.5%, which was 10.4%, 3.3% and 2.3% greater than
those in W1 (88.1%), W2 (95.2%) and W3 (96.2%), respect- The removal percentages of NH4þ-N, NO—3 -N, TN and TP
ively. Overall, polyculture showed the best performance in in CWs under different temperatures are shown in Figure 4.
When the temperature decreased from T1 to T3, the removal
the removal of NHþ4 -N and TN. Comparing the removal
of percentages of NHþ4 -N in W1, W2, W3, and W4
NO—3 -N in four CWs (Figure 3(b)), CWs cultivated with decreased from 98.7% to 88.3%, from 98.2% to 90.9%,
from 99.6% to
veg- etations showed higher removal efficiency (took only
89.1%, and from 99.6% to 92.7%, respectively. Higher and
one day to completely remove NO3—-N in the water)
stable removal percentages of NO—3 -N in W1, W2,
and did
not show much difference among W2 (99.8%), W3 W3, and W4, which were around 92.4%, 99.6%, 99.6%,
and
(99.8%) and W4 (100.0%). In contrast, the removal percen-
99.9%, respectively, were achieved at T1 and T2. At T3, how-
tages of NO3—-N in W1 (92.5%) was lower than the CWs
ever, the removal percentages of NO—3 -N in W1, W2,
with
W3, and W4 decreased to only 59.7%, 79.2%, 87.5%,
vegetation. It could be concluded that CWs cultivated with
and
vegetation obviously enhanced the removal of NO—3 -N.
87.1%, respectively. The removal percentages of TN in
In the reduction of TP, the removal percentages in
W1 W1, W2, W3, and W4 decreased from 88.8% to 75.3%,
(77.0%), W2 (79.7%) and W3 (91.9%) were 15.7%, 13.0% from 97.8% to 85.5%, from 97.8% to 88.4%, and from
and 0.8% lower than that in W4 (92.7%), respectively. Poly- 98.6% to 86.9%, respectively, through T1 to T3. The removal
culture substantially improved the reduction of TP in CWs.
Above results indicated that the NHþ4 -N, TN and
TP
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6 H. Zhu et al. | The effect of vegetation and temperature on constructed wetlands Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017

Figure 4 | Removal efficiencies of CWs under different temperatures; W1: unplanted control, W2: Monoculture (Canna indica), W3: Monoculture (Lythrum salicaria), W4: Polyculture (Canna
indica þ Lythrum salicaria); T1: (Average of 25.5 ◦C), T2: (Average of 19.8 ◦C), T3: (Average of 8.9 ◦C).

7 H. Zhu et al. | The effect of vegetation and temperature on constructed wetlands
percentages of TP in W1, W2, and W3 decreased from
97.3% to 76.5%, from 98.5% to 83.5%, and from 98.7% to
90.8%, respectively, through T1 to T3. However, the
removal percentages of TP in W4 were comparatively
stable (from 95.4% to 92.9%, through T1 to T3). Overall,
the performance of CWs were obviously influenced by temp-
erature, and the polyculture still exhibited best performance
in the removal of nitrogen at relatively higher temperatures
(e.g., T1 and T2). Additionally, polyculture also showed
good performance for the treatment of TP even when the
temperature dropped to T3). It could be concluded that
the polyculture may be ideally suitable for enhancing the
reduction of TP, especially at low temperature of about
8.9 ◦C.
Effect of temperature on microbial activity
The variation of urease activity under different temperature
regimes is illustrated in Table 2. When the temperature
decreased from T1 to T3, the urease activities in W1, W2,
W3 and W4 decreased from 0.27 to 0.11 mg NHþ4 -N g—
1 study, a substantial enhancement of NH -N, NO -N, TN
soil, from 0.40 to 0.28 mg NH4þ-N g—1 soil, from 0.51 to
0.33 mg NH4þ-N g—1 soil, and from 0.73 to 0.36 mg NHþ4 -
N g—1 soil, respectively. These results suggested that
variations
in temperature had a substantial influence on urease
activity in CWs. Meanwhile, there was significantly positive
correlation between urease activity and the reduction of
TN in W2 (R2 ¼ 0.995, P ¼ 0.03243). Similarly,
significantly
positive correlation between urease activity and the
reduction of NO3—-N was observed in W3 (R2 ¼ 0.997,
P ¼ 0.02235) (Figure 4(b) and 4(c), and Table 2).
Therefore, it could be concluded that the urease activity was
signifi- cantly related to the reduction of nitrogen
in the
monoculture of Canna indica or Lythrum salicaria. We
might speculate that the reduction of nitrogen in polyculture
was not only related to the activity of microorganism but
Table 2 | Variations of urease activity in rhizosphere soil under different temperatures
Urease activity (mg NHþ4 -N/g soil)
W1 W2
T1 0.27 0.40
T2 0.18 0.37
T3 0.11 0.28
Note: W1: unplanted control, W2: Monoculture (Canna indica), W3: Monoculture
(Lythrum salicaria), W4: Polyculture (Canna indica þ Lythrum salicaria); T1: (Average of 25.5
◦
C), T2: (Average of 19.8 ◦C), T3: (Average of 8.9 ◦C).
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Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017
also related to other impact factors, such as the activity of
vegetations.
DISCUSSION
Vegetations are important components of CWs and could
contribute to the purification of nutrients, such as nitrogen
and phosphorus (Ge et al 2016). The contribution of veg-
etation to nitrogen removal in CWs varies with different
designs and operation conditions of CWs, because the nitro-
gen removal process in CWs can be affected by various
factors, e.g., the hydraulic condition of CWs, the type of sub-
strate, the wetland plant species, the growth of plants, and
the influent load as well as many other factors (Allen et al
2013; Nivala et al 2013; Zhu et al 2014; Liang et al 2016).
Although the contribution to nitrogen removal by various
pathways remains unclear, plant uptake could usually con-
tribute to at least above 10% of the nitrogen removal in
CWs based upon available literatures. For example, Chan
et al. (2008) proved that plant uptake could account for
10–15% of nutrients (N and P) removal þin CWs.— In this
4 3
and TP removal in CWs with vegetations was observed in
comparison with unplanted control, and plant uptake
accounted for approximate 10–15% of the nutrients removal
by comparing the nutrients removal percentages in CWs
with vegetation and unplanted control (Figure 3). Those
findings were in agreement with the results found in pre-
vious studies (Chan et al 2008). In addition to direct uptake,
plant issue also provided more surfaces for bacteria growing.
Bastviken et al. (2005) has reported that bacteria were much
more abundant when grown attached to surfaces
than when suspended in water. Besides providing necessary
surfaces for bacteria growing, plant root not only provided
oxygen for completed nitrification, but also released organic
carbon as a carbon and energy source for heterotrophic bac-
teria, such as the denitrifying bacteria (Bastiviken et al 2005;
Akratos & Tsihrintizis 2007). Therefore, CWs cultivated with
vegetations showed higher removal efficiency of NO—3 -N.
It has been hypothesized that combining different plant
species in CWs could improve the treatment efficiency of
CWs by means of functional complementarity (Fraset
Et al 2004; Qiu et al. 2011; Rodriguez & Brisson 2016).
Liang et al. (2017) proposed that the pollutant removal effi-
W3 W4 ciencies of polyculture might be better than in
monoculture CWs because of temporal and spatial compen-
0.51 0.73
sations in seasonal plant activity, root affinity for
0.48 0.54
microorganism colonization and ability to take up nutrients.
0.33 0.36
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8 H. Zhu et al. | The effect of vegetation and temperature on constructed wetlands
Our results also showed a substantial enhancement in the
removal of nutrient in polyculture wetlands as compared
to individual culture of Canna indica or Lythrum salicaria
(Figures 3 and 4). The higher nutrient removal efficiency
observed in the polyculture compared with the monoculture
wetlands might be attributed to the functional complemen-
tary between Canna indica and Lythrum salicaria over the
course of the experiment. It was observed that the growth
period of Lythrum salicaria began and finished faster than
Canna indica. Besides, the height of Canna indica and
Lythrum salicaria was also complementary for the better
use of the sunlight (Figure 5). Therefore, it could be con-
cluded that functional complementarity between Canna
indica and Lythrum salicaria was existed and promote the
nutrient removal efficiency in CWs. In addition, the stronger
rhizosphere in polyculture can also stimulate microorgan-
ism activity (Kumari & Triphati 2014;Peng et al 2014). The urease
activities in the polyculture (W4) tended to be greater
than those in the monoculture wetlands as observed in this
current study (Figure 5). Therefore, polyculture showed
better performance as compared to monoculture and
unplanted control. It is noteworthy that the pathways of
nutrient (especially nitrogen) removal in CWs are compli-
cated. In addition to plant uptake and nitrification, there
are other pathways like sediment storage and volatilization
occurring under specific conditions (Wu et al 2013). The
pH of influent water in this study was below 7 (Table 1),
therefore, the volatilization might be very limit. While,
since the substrate and structure of CWs were all the
same, the better performance of CW with polyculture
could be only attributed to the functional complementarity
Figure 5 | Plant growing in the CWs.
Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017
between Canna indica and Lythrum salicaria in terms of
both plant uptake and a better microorganism activity in rhi-
zosphere, as discussed above. Previous studies have revealed
that the removal percentages of NHþ4 -N, TN, and TP
in winter (1–5 ◦C) were lowered by 12–40%, 12–27%
and
6–34%, respectively, compared to those observed in
summer (Ouellet-Plamondon et al 2006;Song et al 2006;Taylor et
al 2011). However, the influence of temperature on
efficiency of CWs might vary with different design of
CWs. Therefore, it is very important to quantify the influ-
ence of temperature on the performance of different CWs
thereby evaluating the capacity of CWs with specific
design (e.g., polyculture) for resisting low temperature. As
shown in Figure 4, Tables 1 and 2, a positive relation was
observed between the performance of CWs, urease activity
and temperature, indicating that low temperatures had an
obviously adverse impact on the performance of CWs and
urease activity. This is consistent with the findings of pre-
vious study (Ouellet-Plamondon et al 2006). It was also
reported that the metabolism and activity of denitrifying
bac- teria tended to decrease, when temperature fell below
10 ◦C, and the process of denitrification was almost stopped
when temperature dropped to below 6 ◦C (Yan & Xu 2016). It
was
no wonder that the removal percentages of NO—3 -N and TN
were relatively stable during most of the operation time
(average temperature above 19.8 ◦C), while a rapidly
decrease of NO—3 -N and TN removal happened at T3
(aver- age temperature of 8.9 ◦C) in this current study.
For the
reduction of TP, rapid decline of removal percentage in
unplanted control was observed at T2 and T3
(Figure 4(d)), which may be caused by the declined activity
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9 H. Zhu et al. | The effect of vegetation and temperature on constructed wetlands
of phosphate-accumulating organisms (PAOS) as reported
by Yan & Xu (2016). However, the removal percentage of TP
in CWs with polyculture was relatively stable and only
lowered by 2.4% at T2 and T3 (Figure 4(d)), this might be
due to the functional complementarity and the root exudates
released from root, which stimulated the activity of PAOS
(Headly et al 2004). Although the dominant pathway for
phosphorus removal in CWs might be sediment storage
and/or substrate adsorption (Liang et al 2016), the contri-
bution of plant uptake and microbial action could not be
ignored. Therefore, the polyculture still showed relatively
high removal percentages of TP at a relatively low tempera-
ture. All in all, more specific research regarding to the
reduction of nutrient at low temperature is recommended
in future studies for further revealing the mechanisms of
plant influence.
CONCLUSION
Whether polyculture is more beneficial than monoculture
for nutrients removal in CWs has been a controversial sub-
ject. In this current study, a comprehensive investigation
was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of CWs with
different vegetations including both polyculture and mono-
culture under declined environmental temperatures. A
substantial enhancement for nitrogen and TP removal in
polyculture was observed as compared to unplanted control
or monoculture of Canna indica or Lythrum salicaria. Both
the decontamination of nutrient and the microbial activity
in CWs were distinctly influenced by the decline of tempera-
ture. Compared with monoculture and unplanted control,
the polyculture still showed better nutrient removal effi-
ciency when the average environmental temperature
dropped to 19.8 ◦C. All above results demonstrated that
polyculture was an efficient way to enhance the purification
of nutrients under most temperature regimes. It could be
concluded that CWs with polyculture would be a good strat-
egy for nutrients treatment in rural regions of Northeast
China.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the National Key Research and
Development Program of China (No.2016YFC0500404-4),
the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973
Program) (No. 2013CB430401), and the Youth Innovation
Promotion Association CAS (No. 2017274).
Water Science & Technology | in press | 2017
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First received 31 May 2017; accepted in revised form 19 October 2017. Available online 23 November 2017