Author(s)

Z. Zeng & B. Li

Abstract

Problems caused by urbanization, such as inadequate water content in the urban foundation, ecological imbalance in the soil and the heat island effect, have become issues that people pay a great amount of attention to. Two projects, cited as being successful in integrating urban landscape planning and wetland ecology, are the Water Garden in Portland, USA, and the Living Water Garden in Chengdu, China. An artificial wetland is effective in establishing urban ecology. It may not only solve the problem of the urban water crisis, but also brings a series of good eco-environmental effects, such as the conservation of groundwater, regulation of climate, extending green areas, purifying the air, beautifying a city, and even effectively controlling flood damage, etc. Keywords: rainwater infiltration, artificial wetland, city ecology. 1 Introduction With the over exploitation of soil resources in urban development, the length and breadth of land that was utilized for agricultural or forestry purposes or as natural habitats of animals or plants, has been unearthed by architectural changes in many landscape areas. Industrial land, traffic sites and large numbers of concrete buildings, as well as other sorts of land impervious to water, have taken the place of the original land to become the main part of the urban foundation. This phenomenon seriously affects the natural infiltration of precipitation and causes surface runoff to collect relatively together, which may result in urban floods, serious water shortage in urban foundations and disturb the balance of the soil, thus cutting off the natural cycle in an urban environment. Meanwhile, a fog is formed by exhaust gases that cover the city and traps radiation heat in the air,

Keywords

rainwater infiltration, artificial wetland, city ecology