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TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF FECAL INDICATOR BACTERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE APPLICATION OF MST METHODOLOGIES TO DIFFERENTIATE SOURCES OF FECAL CONTAMINATION
Citation:
MOLINA, M. TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF FECAL INDICATOR BACTERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE APPLICATION OF MST METHODOLOGIES TO DIFFERENTIATE SOURCES OF FECAL CONTAMINATION. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-05/107 (NTIS PB2006-101102), 2005.
Impact/Purpose:
The objective of the proposed study is to evaluate and apply fast and reproducible DNA-based technology that can detect and track fecal contamination back to its source in complex environmental matrices, including recreational and drinking water resources.
Description:
Temporal variability in the gastrointestinal flora of animals impacting water resources with fecal material can be one of the factors producing low source identification rates when applying microbial source tracking (MST) methods. Understanding how bacterial species and genotypes vary over time is highly relevant when the fecal material used to create a source library is collected under very different seasonal conditions than the environmental sample. Our objective was to identify and compare the temporal and spatial variability of fecal indicator bacteria from a specific host in manure and water samples and evaluate the implications of such variability on microbial source tracking approaches and applications.