ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Toxicology, Pollution and the Environment
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1599955
This article is part of the Research TopicMunicipal Solid Waste Landfills: Environmental Effects and Pollution ManagementView all articles
The relevance of Eastern Canadian native willows as alternatives to Salix miyabeana in nitrogen leachate-treating vegetative filters
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institut de Recherche en Biologie Végétale, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- 2Montreal University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- 3Montreal Botanical Garden, Montreal, Canada
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As waste from engineered landfills decomposes, it produces nitrogen (N)-laden leachate that cannot be directly released into the environment. Plants such as willows have the potential to phytofilter this polluted water but must be able to tolerate large loads of contaminants and flooding conditions. While cultivars of Salix miyabeana selected for biomass production have also been proven efficient to decontaminate soil, municipal water, agriculture runoff or landfill leachate from organic and inorganic pollutants, willow species native to Eastern Canada could better contribute to phytomanagement site biodiversity and may be just as effective in treating leachate. In this experiment, three willows indigenous to Canada: S. amygdaloides, S. bebbiana and S. nigra, were tested alongside S. miyabeana 'SX64'. A mesocosm experiment was conducted under semi-controlled conditions over six weeks to document the impact of various nitrogen overfertilization and flooding treatments on plant development, and to test the plants' tolerance to these constraints to evaluate their suitability for large-scale vegetative filters. Overall, growth and biomass production of S. nigra and S. amygdaloides were not affected by the treatments. Furthermore, S. nigra was ten times more efficient than the cultivar of S. miyabeana in terms of decontamination capacity. While still in the juvenile phase, S. nigra plants removed the equivalent of 240m3 per hectare of the N-contaminated water initially applied (60 kg of N), under both permanent and cyclic flooding. This condition has the advantage of being tolerated by a greater diversity of species, thus offering a wider range of ecosystemic services.
Keywords: Contaminated water, flooding, landfill leachate, Phytotechnology, Salix, Ecophysiology
Received: 25 Mar 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Auger, Labrecque, Susini and Laur. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Joan Laur, joan.laur@montreal.ca
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