Environment Pollution and Climate Change
Open Access

Research Article

Assessment of the Efficiency of a Pilot Constructed Wetland on the Remediation of Water Quality; Case Study of Litani River, Lebanon

¹Department of Life and Earth Science, Faculty of Sciences I, the Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon

²Litani River Basin Management Support (LRBMS) Program, Litani River Authority, Ghannajeh Bldg., 5th floor, Bechara El Khoury Street, P.O. Box: 11-3732, Beirut, Lebanon

³Department of Environmental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut (AUB)

⁴FlowWest, 1624 Franklin Street Suite 901, Oakland, California, USA

⁵Research Center for Environment and Development, Beirut Arab University, Bekaa, Lebanon

*Corresponding Author:

Safaa Baydoun
Research Center for Environment and Development
Beirut Arab University, Bekaa, Lebanon
Tel: 009613949516
E-mail: safaa.baydoun@bau.edu.lb

Received date: March 10, 2017; Accepted date: March 23, 2017; Published date: March 29, 2017

Citation: Amacha N, Karam F, Jerdi M, Frank P, Viala E, et al. (2017) Assessment of the Efficiency of a Pilot Constructed Wetland on the Remediation of Water Quality; Case Study of Litani River, Lebanon. Environ Pollut Climate Change 1:119.

Copyright: © 2017 Amacha N, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The potential use of constructed wetlands to remediate polluted rivers is promising and has recently received a great deal of interest. This study aims at evaluatingthe efficiency of a constructed wetland of the Litani River in Lebanon using two types of aquatic plants, Phragmites australis and Sparganium erectum. Comparative analysis of the mean values of water quality parameters of the inflow and outflow water of the wetland system was conducted during the period of April 2014 and July 2015. Findings show statistically significant improvement in water quality parameters. Hence, results clearly show the efficiency of the constructed wetland in the remediation of the polluted river water and the important role of the aquatic macrophytes in remediation. In conclusion, the studied wetland provides an efficient sustainable approach towards the integrated river basin management of Litani River. Further comprehensive studies to better illustrate the role of aquatic plants in the remediation process are needed.

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