Strategies for Water Quality Assessment: A Multiparametric Analysis of Microbiological Changes in River Waters

Abstract

River waters are classified worldwide in relation to their chemical quality status, which is assessed by the presence of inorganic and organic\ud pollutants. Meanwhile, microbiological quality evaluations are based mainly on the occurrence of pathogens and faecal contaminants, which\ud are indirectly retrieved by standard cultivation methods. In this study, the structural dynamics of a riverine bacterioplankton community were\ud investigated through a quantitative single-cell approach with the use of flow cytometry for the quantification of total, viable and active cells.\ud Furthermore, catalyzed reporter deposition (CARD)-FISH was used for the evaluation of Proteobacteria and Cytophaga–Flavobacteria bacterial\ud classes. The aim was to identify the major cytometric and phylogenetic cell groups that most representatively reflect the physical and\ud chemical changes occurring in an upland-to-lowland transect along a human-impacted river (the Foglia River, Italy). The use of CARD-FISH\ud to obtain cell abundance measurements of specific taxonomic clusters enabled different microbial propagation dynamics along the river transects\ud to be identified. Furthermore, our results highlighted that the multiparametric approach with flow cytometry produces basic microbiological\ud parameters in a reasonable time span that is consistent with the requirements for an early warning monitoring strategy with respect to\ud integrated riverine water quality assessments

Water Quality and Total Microbial Load: A Double-Threshold Identification Procedure Intended for Space Applications

“…Our results were in line with published data in terms of both total and intact cell counts assessed from different water types including drinking waters (Vital et al, 2012), ground waters (Amalfitano et al, 2014), river waters (Boi et al, 2016), and wastewaters (Foladori et al, 2010). Evidences of significant cross-correlation among microbial quantification techniques are widely reported in literature (Siebel et al, 2008; Vital et al, 2012).…”

Water quality and microbial load: a double-threshold identification procedure intended for space applications

“…Our results were in line with published data in terms of both total and intact cell counts assessed from different water types including drinking waters (Vital et al, 2012), ground waters (Amalfitano et al, 2014), river waters (Boi et al, 2016), and wastewaters (Foladori et al, 2010). Evidences of significant cross-correlation among microbial quantification techniques are widely reported in literature (Siebel et al, 2008;Vital et al, 2012).…”

Chemical mixtures and fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis of natural microbial community in the Tiber river

“…They play a key role in ecosystem functioning and in several ecosystem services by being responsible for geochemical cycles and bio-removal of organic compounds, including xenobiotics (Turbé et al, 2010). Traditionally, pathogen microorganisms have been used as indicators of fecal contamination, however natural microbial populations can be used to assess the functional efficiency of ecosystems being useful for environmental assessment as complementary methods to chemical monitoring (Boi et al, 2016). For these reasons, the changes that can be observed in a microbial community can be analyzed from a global and multivariate perspective, to understand and assess the impact of the wide and complex mixture of chemical and physical parameters on the ecological status of the environment.…”