Wetlands : Nutrients, Metals and Mass Cycling

This volume resulted from the workshop entitled "Nutrient Cycling and Retention in Natural and Constructed Wetlands IV" which was held at Trebon, Czech Republic, on September 26 to 29, 2001. This time we selected the title "Wetlands -- Nutrients, Metals and Mass Cycling" in order to avoid confusion with the previous proceedings which resulted from the workshop of the same title (Nutrient Cycling and Retention in Natural and Constructed Wetlands", Backhuys Publishers, 1999 and "Trans-for-mations of Nutrients in Natural and Constructed Wetlands", Backhuys Publishers, 2001). Another factor which influenced the title of this book is the fact that despite keeping the workshop title, other topics have been discussed in the workshop recently. These topics include, for example, heavy metals retention, removal and compartmentalization, reed beds for sludge dewatering, the influence of watershed management on mass cycling or the use of GIS for wetland evaluation. The workshop was planned, similar to three preceding workshops in 1995, 1997 and 1999 to provide an opportunity for scientists working on functioning constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment to meet scientists studying processes occurring in natural wetland ecosystems. The idea of bringing both groups of scientists together proved again to be very useful and we believe that both groups benefited from the exchange of experience. The workshop was organized by Jan Vymazal (Prague) and Jan Pokorn (Institute of Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences and ENKI o.p.s., Trebon) and was supported by grant MSM 000020001 "Solar Energetics of Natural and Tech-no-lo-gi-cal Systems" from the Ministry of Education and Youth of the Czech Republic. The workshop was attended by participants from 13 countries from Europe, Australia, Asia and North and South Americas. This book includes 21 refereed contributions out of 30 papers which were presented during the seminar. All papers also include discussion taped after each presentation and then "recovered" by the editor.Vymazal, Jan is the author of 'Wetlands : Nutrients, Metals and Mass Cycling', published 2003 under ISBN 9789057821400 and ISBN 9057821400.