Abstract
The linkages between water and health are direct, and one major issue is to determine how extreme weather/climate change could potentially impact our water, and hence public and animal health. Although there are numerous studies indicating increase in transmission of vector-borne diseases due to warmer temperature, how climate change will have long-term effects on water borne pathogen, microbial contamination, and public health is yet known. To understand the possible impact of air temperature and stream flows on pathogen levels in ambient water, this analysis built on a previous study of Pandey (Modeling in-steram E. coli concentrations. Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, 2012), which executed a multiple year study focused on testing pathogen indicator (E. coli) in various locations in a river in Iowa. In this watershed-scale study, agriculture land use is the dominant use with limited urban impacts. The results showed the cyclical pattern of pathogen indicator concentrations in the stream water column, which was associated with air temperature patterns in summer and winter seasons. While precise understanding of extreme weather effects on microbial water quality is yet to be known, these results substantiate the fact that an increase in air temperature coincided with the increase in waterborne pathogens in streams, which may increase public and animal health risks through exposure to microbial contamination in water.
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Acknowledgement
To conduct this research, financial supports were provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 7, and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Data presentation and interpretation of this manuscript is of authors and do not reflect the views of the sponsoring agencies.
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Pandey, P., Soupir, M. (2021). Water and Health. In: Pandey, A., Mishra, S., Kansal, M., Singh, R., Singh, V. (eds) Climate Impacts on Water Resources in India. Water Science and Technology Library, vol 95. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51427-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51427-3_1
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