Irrigation of forest species with wastewater and sludge: Experiments, modeling, and qualitative assessment

The reuse of treated municipal wastewater in land irrigation constitutes, in Greece today, a practical method of disposal which is expected to contribute decisively in the immediate future towards the handling and the minimization of environmental problems arising from the disposal of wastewater on land and aquatic systems, with the simultaneously upgrade and restoration of polluted soils and re-creation of green areas. The present paper describes the results from an experiment in which wastewater and sludge from the Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) of Agrinion, Greece can be used, with caution, for irrigation and fertilization of forest species grown under greenhouse conditions. Linear models of tree species are obtained for different irrigation cases on the basis of GMDH-based inductive algorithm COMBI. The paper also represents a qualitative assessment technique to simplify analysis of the results.