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Traditional uses of fecal bacteria as a method to identify the major contributors tononpoint source pollution has recently been replaced by novel alternative methods suchas microbial source tracking (MST). A critical question not adequately addressed inMST literature is the stability and distinctness of fecal bacterial populations once theyhave entered surface water. Therefore, this laboratory-based study was designed todetermine if cattle, swine, and poultry manure had distinct populations of fecal coliform(FC) and fecal streptococci (FS) bacteria that could be identified statistically over time.Laboratory-scale mesocosms were created in triplicate for three manure sources: cattle,poultry, and swine. The average rate of decay for fecal bacteria in surface water rangedfrom -0.085 hrsup-1/sup for FC in cattle manure to -0.140 hrsup-1/sup for FS in swine manure.Discriminant analysis of the FC and FS species composition data indicated that distinctpopulations of fecal bacteria exist for each manure source examined. The rates of correctclassification (RCCs) were highest in the FS species compositions with all three sourceshaving RCCs of 100%. The RCC for FC species composition were lower than those forFS, with RCCs of 83.3%, 71.4%, and 100% for cattle, poultry, and swine, respectively.Distinct populations of both FC and FS appear to exist and can be classified correctly insurface water even in the presence of native bacterial populations. Based on the findingsof this study, research into the development of an MST methodology based on fecalbacterial species composition is warranted. Includes 10 references, tables, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 06/17/2004 Number of Pages: 9File Size: 1 file , 280 KB