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Predictive Modeling of Microbial Indicators for Timely Beach Notifications and Advisories at Marine Beaches
Citation:
Zepp, R., Mike Cyterski, M. Molina, C. Fitzgerald, G. Whelan, R. Parmar, K. Wolfe, AND M. Galvin. Predictive Modeling of Microbial Indicators for Timely Beach Notifications and Advisories at Marine Beaches. 2016 Recreational Waters Conference, New Orleans, LA, April 12 - 15, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
To be presented at the 2016 Recreational Waters Conference.
Description:
Marine beaches are occasionally contaminated by unacceptably high levels of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) that exceed EPA water quality criteria. Here we describe application of a recent version of the software package Virtual Beach tool (VB 3.0.6) to build and evaluate multiple linear regression (MLR) and GBM models to predict microbial water quality for selected marine beaches located in the eastern U.S. and Puerto Rico. Both culturable and qPCR methods were used to measure FIB (enterococci) concentrations at these beaches. Hydrometeorological and biogeochemical data also were obtained concurrently. Our objective was to compare results from statistical analyses of these data to compare marine and freshwater beaches in our date sets.