Designing principles of an ecological water storage basin on coastal saline: a case study

The degradation of water source environment becomes serious problems accompanying with rapid urbanization in China. Ecological engineering provides ecologically sound and cost effective solution to solving this problem. As a case study, a 15 hm 2 ecological water storage basin for a water plant was designed and constructed on the TEDA area in Tianjin City. Located on saline, the construction of this project has to face serious difficulties, such as high salinity, scarce seed banks of macrophytes, and strong winds. Freshwater replacement, soil amendation and macrophytes planting at the basinshore, wooden water breaker and plastic membrane installation and other measures were conducted for the assistance of plant community establishment. The result showed that the chloride concentration in the basin water decreased from 11600 mg/L to less than 100 mg/L, and the chloride content in the basin sediment decreased from 2 1% to 0 35% after freshwater soaking. The introduced macrophytes of 8 species all survived and 11 other macrophytes species were occurred in the basin. A new ecosystem was created with increased biological diversity in the original saline, and the water quality was improved. This ecological water storage basin also provided a pleasing landscape for local people.