ABSTRACT
Urban stormwater wetlands were first surveyed by Strecker et al. (1992), who documented the performance of 25 natural and constructed wetlands treating runoff. The implementation of the technology and the knowledge base continued to build, resulting in a compilation of data from 76 wetlands worldwide by Wong et al. (1999), and from 49 wetlands in the United States by Carleton et al. (2001). In North America, these are all FWS systems, and that is the predominant wetland type elsewhere as well. A typical configuration consists of a sedimentation basin as a forebay, followed by some combination of marshes and deeper pools. Design guidelines have now been promulgated by a number of sources (for example: Schueler, 1992; Breen and Lawrence, 1998; Wong et al., 1999; LEC, 2000; Center for Watershed Protection, 2001).
