The relationship between traditional water quality variables and pathogen
occurrence in source water is unclear. Through funding from the National Agri-
Environmental Standards Initiative (NAESI), under Canada's Agricultural Policy
Framework, four agricultural watersheds in Canada were surveyed for pathogens,
bacterial water quality indicators, and a suite of physico-chemical water quality indicators
to better understand these relationships. Water samples were collected bi-weekly during
the spring, summer and fall seasons at 27 sites across all 4 watersheds and tested for these
parameters. Statistical analyses, such as descriptive and univariate statistics, probability
analysis and regression (multiple linear/logistic regression) were used to ascertain the
relationship between water quality parameters and pathogen occurrence in the context of
existing standards of source water quality. Overall, there was lack of spatio-temporal
consistency or robustness in the correlative relationships between pathogen and
traditional water quality indicators. Statistical approaches involving probability analyses
provided some important insights about occurrence of pathogens in relation to general
water quality in watersheds. The data suggests that each watershed is unique with respect
to the spatio-temporal occurrence of pathogens, features which are important for
understanding applications and approaches for quantitative microbial risk assessment. Includes 8 references, tables, figure.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 1.3 MB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 11 |
| Published : | 11/01/2009 |
