Microbiological Monitoring for Water-Quality Assessment

Abstract

The weakest link in the chain of events leading to production of reliable microbiological-monitoring data is a poor or indequate sample. This results primarily from diversity of environmental conditions from which a sample must be collected. In surface waters affinity of microbiological organisms for suspended particles necessitates that sampling procedures be designed to collect a representative sample of the water-sediment mixture. The key problem and the challenge to microbiological monitoring is production of a sterilizable, depth-integrating sampler that will accommodate the disparity of sediment distribution as related to variations in depth and cross-section and the changes in streamflow. Until such a sampler has been designed, tested, and made readily available, the data produced in microbiological-monitoring programs involving surface waters can be considered of questionable accuracy, regardless of the notable advances that are taking place in the state-of-the-art of analytical procedures.