- 1Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management, TU Wien, Austria
- 2Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering, TU Wien, Austria
- 3Institute for Hygiene and Applied Immunology, Medical University of Vienna, Austria
- 4Institute of Land and Water Management Research, Federal Agency for Water Management, Petzenkirchen, Austria
- 5Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria
- 6Division Water Quality and Health, Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Microbiology, Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, Krems an der Donau, Austria
- 7Utrecht University, Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht, the Netherlands
- 8Interuniversity Cooperation Centre Water & Health (http://www.waterandhealth.at/)
Water contamination caused by enteric microbial pathogens from humans and animals poses serious risks to public health. Rainfall events can induce the release of microorganisms from feces, and the health risks posed by these pathogens to water bodies are highly dependent on their transport and survival characteristics. Novel molecular tools and diagnostic capabilities have rapidly advanced in recent years, offering significant potential to revolutionize the study of microbial contamination and transport in water bodies and to enhance the modeling of overland transport of microorganisms through the application of these advanced diagnostic methods. This study employs rainfall-release experiments and pathogen enumeration in runoff and infiltrated water to investigate bacterial release and overland transport mechanisms from fresh cow feces, aiming to address gaps in advanced molecular techniques and to assess the impacts of fecal shape and aging on the precise quantification of bacterial overland transport (BOT).
Artificial rainfall experiments are conducted on fresh cow pat samples which are placed onto bare surfaces to study bacterial release and onto small scale undisturbed soil plots to study bacterial overland transport. The experimental setup includes three rainfall intensities (40 mm/h, 60 mm/h and 80 mm/h) and two slopes (5% and 25%). In addition, the effects of different fecal shapes are investigated (large and small surface area-to-volume ratios). The quantitative analyses are done for different microbial parameters (FIB, bacterial MST markers) using both culture-based and qPCR-based methods and the effects of experimental setups, microbial parameters, and enumeration methods will be compared and evaluated. The release will be modelled using the Bradford-Schijven model formulations, and Kineros2/STWIR will be used for modelling the BOT.
This study will improve the understanding of the release and transport of manure-borne pathogens from fresh cow pats and provide a more precise quantitative approach to measuring BOT using advanced diagnostic methods.
How to cite: Zhou, Y., Linke, R., Sommer, R., Lindner, G., Strauss, P., Ramler, D., Hykollari, A., Stalder, G., Anton Schatz, R., Priselac, K., Leifels, M., Stevenson, M., Demeter, K., Paul Blaschke, A., Schijven, J., Farnleitner, A., and Derx, J.: Multiparametric Modeling of Bacterial Release and Overland Transport from Feces: Insights from Rainfall Experiments and Molecular Diagnostic Tools , EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-12690, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-12690, 2025.
