Preservation of Watershed Regime for Low-Impact Development through Detention
- 1 January 2010
- journal article
- Published by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
- Vol. 15 (1), 15-19
- https://doi.org/10.1061/(asce)he.1943-5584.0000144
Abstract
Low-impact development (LID) allows for greater development potential with less environmental impacts using on-site distributed storm-water controls that achieve a good balance among conservation, growth, ecosystem protection, and public safety. The qualitative statement of the ultimate goal for LID can serve as guidance for engineering designs, but it is inadequate for comparison and selection among the innovative alternatives. This paper presents an innovative method by which the long-term runoff statistics are employed as the basis to quantify the impact of the development on the watershed hydrologic regime. In this study, the standard LID detention volume is defined by the storm-water storage volume required to preserve the predevelopment mean and standard deviation for runoff volume population. Consequently, a detention basin is considered oversized if the after-detention runoff volume population has a lower mean flow while the undersized counterpart produces a mean runoff volume higher than that under the predevelopment condition. This simple but quantifiable method is very useful for detention alternative comparisons, and can serve as a guide to retrofit an existing detention basin, according to the proposed LID initiative.Keywords
This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit:
- Retrofit Storm Water Retention Volume for Low Impact DevelopmentJournal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, 2008
- Overflow Risk Analysis for Stormwater Quality Control BasinsJournal of Hydrologic Engineering, 2002
- Runoff Capture and Delivery Curves for Storm-Water Quality Control DesignsJournal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 2002
- Maximized Detention Volume Determined by Runoff Capture RatioJournal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 1996
- STREAM‐CHANNEL INCISION FOLLOWING DRAINAGE‐BASIN URBANIZATION1Jawra Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 1990