Low-polluted waters treated by traditional constructed wetlands (CWs) were usually difficult especially because of restricted available land use. A novel hybrid CWs could be applied to remediate low-polluted rivers, which can realize steps complementary to each other that exploit the specific advantages of the individual systems and achieve higher treatment effects, especially for low concentration pollutions. The hybrid CWs developed to treat the polluted Bagong River, one of tributary to the Yellow River, have been in operation since the end of 2020 in the Yellow River watershed, the water quality can be improved by 1 ~ 2 grades (according to China Standard GB3838-2002) after water flows through artificial medium cell, shallow emergent macrophytes cell, and deep submerged hydrophyte cell. The system site was located in the lower reaches of Bagong River, Jincheng City, covering a total area of 99647m 2 . The treatment capacity was designed to be 65000 m 3 /d, and the influent concentrations of ammonia nitrogen, total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), and COD were 5.0±7.7 mg/L, 16.2±4.2 mg/L, 0.30±0.25 mg/L, 29.0 ± 17.0 mg/L, respectively. The obtained results showed a satisfactory pollutant removal capacity of the hybrid system, with mean removal rates of 57.0%, 20%, 48.0%, and 29.0% for ammonia nitrogen, TN, TP, and COD, respectively, that the effluent reached the downstream met the Standard of Class IV Status (GB3838-2002) in most instances. Meanwhile, more than 12 species of aquatic birds were attracted to inhabited in the hybrid CWs. It was suggested that the system showed a relatively stable anti-impact ability under different influent loads and good ecological benefits. These results concluded that the hybrid CWs would be a promising and feasible treatment method for low-polluted waters, as adapted to the local context, to better improve water quality, ecological diversity and bring landscape benefits to humans
