Riparian Buffers and Phytotechnology

I’ve been studying different types of phytoremediation lately and here’s a new form I’d never heard much about: The riparian buffer. Named after the riparian zone, A riparian buffer is the assemblage of plants and organisms lining the bank of a water body, be it a marsh, lake, stream, etc. These are naturally occurring zones that form the transition between the aquatic habitat and that on land.

Natural riparian buffers help filter water and remove non-point source contamination. In phytoremediation, riparian buffers are designed and maintained with specific vegetation to treat a specific contaminant(s) in the surface water or in shallow ground water entering the waterway. According to the University of Florida webpage on riparian buffers, the application of this biotechnology has not traditionally been common in the USA, but is gaining popularity as a sustainable way to protect waterways, particularly from agricultural runoff containing pesticides or excessive amounts of nitrogen or phosphate fertilizers.