Medium-Term Impacts of Hurricane Matthew on Water Quality: Assessing Fecal Source Tracking Markers

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • February 26, 2019
Creator
  • Lempp, Rachel
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Environmental Health Sciences
Abstract
  • Hurricane Matthew caused heavy flooding in eastern North Carolina in October 2016,raising concerns about impacts on local water quality. Beginning in December 2016, samples were collected from paired surface water, well water, and tap water sites in Robeson County. Samples (n=120) were collected on ten sampling dates between December 2016 and August 2017 and were used to assess water connectivity and water quality and to determine duration of impacts. This sub-study focused on testing samples for microbial source tracking (MST) markers to identify possible sources of fecal contamination. We used a novel duplex droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) assay to simultaneously determine gene copy numbers of swine (Pig-2-bac) and human (HF183) MST markers. Results showed detection of human markers in 30% (n=47) of surface water samples at an average concentration of 43 gene copies of HF183 per 100 mL of water. Human markers were found persistently at site 3B on 100% of sampling dates (n=10). No swine markers were found in any samples. Tested well and tap water samples were all negative for the targeted MST markers, suggesting that flooding from Hurricane Matthew did not have medium-term impacts on human or swine fecal contamination in drinking water. The ddPCR assay developed here shows promise for environmental applications and could prove to be a valuable tool for MST.
Date of publication
Keyword
DOI
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Note
  • Funding: Honors Undergraduate Research Fund
  • Funding: U.S. National Science Foundation awards EAR-1712176 and EAR- 1712345
Advisor
  • Stewart, Jill
Degree
  • Bachelor of Science in Public Health
Academic concentration
  • Environmental Health Sciences
Honors level
  • Honors
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2018
Language
  • English

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details 2018_Lempp.pdf 2019-05-17 Public Download