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printed by www.postersession.com •Phosphorous is a key nutrient essential to life. Too much however can cause problems in an aquatic system. These problems can include an overload of nutrients that cause turbidity and algae blooms (1). Phosphorous loading into a waterway is caused by a variety of factors, and these factors are in large part due to land use . •The three different land types concentrated on in this study were agricultural, impervious ( urban ), and forested. The stream sections were classified based on the predominant surrounding and upstream land uses. •Nineteen stream sections from tributaries in the Lamoille River drainage basin were examined in the Summer of 2008 for amounts of total phosphorus and fecal coliform bacterial contamination. •Total P concentrations in stream water were generally three times higher during a period of heavy precipitation in late July than during base flow in the middle of June. Some agricultural and impervious sites had total P concentrations comparable to reference forested sites, but impacted agricultural and impervious sites could have total P concentrations two to twenty-fold higher than forested sites during base flow and storm events. •The overall trends of the phosphorous concentration indicate that agricultural sites produced the highest amounts, followed by the impervious sites, while the forested sites showed the lowest daily concentration. •The results suggest that the source of E. coli in agricultural areas was predominantly from livestock. • The source of E. coli in impervious sites was also largely from livestock, but the contribution from human sources increased to one-fourth of the isolates. •The source of most isolates of E. coli in forested sites was unable to be determined, possibly because wildlife were not included in the genetic library, but livestock were still the source for one-fourth of the E. coli isolated. • Total P was measured on seven occasions from June 13 through August 5. •Fecal coliforms were collected on June 23 and 24. 1.Lake Champlain Basin Program, date n/a, http://www.lcbp.org/PHOSPSUM.HTM. Retrieved on 11/1/08 2.Lamoille Valley watershed map taken from www.lcbp.org/Atlas/MapJPEG/nat_lamoille.jpg. Retrieved on 8/5/08. • The discharge trends clearly illustrate areas where the state could use more prominent buffer zones, in particularly, the agricultural sites and a number of impervious sites. •The frequent occurrence of E. coli from livestock (predominantly cows, goats, horse, and sheep) reflects the pastoral nature of the landscape in Lamoille County. As would be expected, human sources were predominantly associated with human habitation (impervious) sites. •Library classification of wild life, and a more extensive human E.coli library would be beneficial, and may happen in the near future in order to help identify the unknown samples acquired this summer and for future studies. ABSTRACT METHODS RESULTS CONCLUSIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY Comparison of total phosphorus and sources of fecal coliforms in streams surrounded by forested, agricultural, and impervious land uses in the Lamoille River, VT, drainage basin Greggory A Perry, Timothy R Thurston, and Robert Genter PhD Johnson State College, Johnson VT RIBOTYPING RESULTS PHOSPHOROUS DISCHARGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For funding of our project we thank the NSF and VT EPSCoR. KathiJo Jankowski did an amazing job coordinating the streams project, and the laboratory team at UVM were instrumental in processing our phosphorous samples. Jim Ryan of the Vermont Department of Natural Resources played a vital role in helping us choose our sites. We also thank Farley Ann Brown, Declan McCabe, and Carlos Pinkham for advice and inspiration. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m³/s Concentration μg/l Brown's River AG 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Brewster River F 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Brown's River F 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Brewster River S IMP 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Brewster River IMP 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Deer Brook Ag 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Deer Brook IMP 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l French Hill Brook F 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Brown's River IMP 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Ryder Brook IMP 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Gihon River IMP 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Mill Brook AG 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l North Branch IMP 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Mill Brook AG 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Wild Branch IMP 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Wild Branch AG 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Wild Branch F 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l Seymour Brook AG 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Discharge m 3 /s Concentration μg/l North Branch F Sample Collection Collected 1 liter of stream water from each site. Filter Samples were concentrated using a .45 μg membrane filter. Culture Smear of filter plated on McConkey Agar with MUG. Verification Isolated colonies were verified as E. coli using citrate, indole, Voges-Proskauer, and methly red IMViC tests. Ribotyping Isolated E. coli colonies were ribotyped using a Dupont Riboprinter©. ECORI restriction enzyme fragments DNA, and electrophoresis is conducted. DNA is removed from gel via Southern blotting and the membrane is washed by a 16s rDNA, RNA probe. Cluster Analysis Unweighted pair-grouping (UPGMA) Euclidian distance method was used to create a dendogram using Bionummerics© software package. Identification The unknown stream samples were compared to the known human and livestock isolates of E. coli. The highest similarity value of 92 or more indicated a match. The identification was compared to the cluster analysis for confidence and consistency.
