Tropical and subtropical wetland plant species used for phytoremediation in treatment wetlands

Abstract

The high diversity of aquatic and wetland plants in tropical and subtropical regions of the world provides great potential for uses in phytoremediation techniques, ecotoxicological studies, and biomonitoring programs. Phytoremediation refers to pollutant removal using terrestrial plants to remediate soils or aquatic plants to remediate wastewaters. As a phytoremediation technique, treatment wetlands (TWs) provide a highly applicable nature-based solution for water quality problems across a range of scenarios. In these systems, plants are the main component, and natural processes are optimized to improve water quality.Due to the fact that aquatic and wetland plant species are diverse and abundant in tropical and subtropical regions, and the environmental conditions are highly favorable for their growth, TWs are a very suitable technology (Rodriguez-Dominguez et al. 2020; Wijekoon et al. 2022). However, the abundant literature about TWs is scarce regarding studies about the plant role, ecology, toxicological responses, bioaccumulation efficiency, and the search for native alternative species. Therefore, we think that additional studies focused on TW plants are needed.The aims of this chapter are to characterize the plant species used in TWs from tropical and subtropical regions, describe the role of plants and their ecological dynamics in TWs, and to assess some alternative species that potentially can be used in TWs. In this chapter, we describe these issues and present literature on the subject.