Fecal indicators and antibiotic resistance genes exhibit diurnal trends in the Chattahoochee River: Implications for water quality monitoring.

ABSTRACT: Water bodies that serve as sources of drinking or recreational water are routinely monitored for fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) by state and local agencies. Exceedances of monitoring thresholds set by those agencies signal likely elevated human health risk from exposure, but FIB give little information about the potential source of contamination. To improve our understanding of how within-day variation could impact monitoring data interpretation, we conducted a study at two sites along the Chattahoochee River that varied in their recreational usage and adjacent land-use (natural versus urban), collecting samples every 30 min over one 24-h period. We assayed for three types of microbial indicators: FIB (total coliforms and Escherichia coli); human fecal-associated microbial source tr

SUBMITTER: Nguyen KH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9684717 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature