Preliminary values and standard operating procedures for determining fecal pollution sources in Utah watersheds

We collected water samples from the Logan River, Red Butte Creek, and Provo River in Utah in June 2016 to assess the amount of human, ruminant, and dog fecal contamination in these watersheds. Samples were collected in sterile 1L bottles at sites where the iUTAH NSF EPSCoR program has installed aquatic sensor stations along a mountain-to-urban gradient in each watershed. After collection, we filtered samples through 0.2um PES filters, extracted the sample DNA using a MoBio PowerSoil DNA extraction kit, and analyzed the samples via qPCR.

By identifying the major sources of fecal pollution along urbanization gradients in Utah, we hope to inform efforts to manage fecal pollution in Utah's watersheds. In addition to creating generating raw qPCR values that show the relative contributions of each type (human, ruminant, and dog) to fecal pollution in the rivers sampled, we selected primer sets that we hope will be adopted as standard in future fecal pollution assessment efforts. We also created a standard operating procedure for the creation of qPCR standards, which will allow future researchers to determine total numbers of fecal indicator bacteria present in water samples.

Funded by the iUTAH NSF EPSCoR program (National Science Foundation, iUTAH-innovative Urban Transitions and Aridregion Hydro-sustainability, NSF Award Number 1208732) and conducted at Brigham Young University.