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Bacterial Source Tracking in the Sinking Creek Watershed Using Antibiotic Resistance Analysis and Ribotyping.

Fecal pollution of surface water is a significant environmental health issue. Indicator organisms are used to monitor microbial water quality, but often their presence does not coincide with the presence of pathogens. Bacterial source tracking is a term describing methods to determine the origin of fecal pollution based on bacterial traits. The objective of this research is to evaluate the use of 2 bacterial source tracking techniques, antibiotic resistance analysis (ARA) and ribotyping, to determine the sources of bacteria isolated from Sinking Creek. Based on the results of this study, ARA and ribotyping are not useful techniques for identifying sources of fecal pollution in Sinking Creek. ARA classification rates were low, and ribotype pattern generation success was 37%. The results of this study bring into question the reliability and reproducibility of these 2 source tracking methods for routine use in small watersheds.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-3265
Date03 May 2008
CreatorsGallagher, Lisa Kathleen
PublisherDigital Commons @ East Tennessee State University
Source SetsEast Tennessee State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceElectronic Theses and Dissertations
RightsCopyright by the authors.

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