Assessing the utility of shellfish sanitation monitoring data for long-term estuarine water quality analysis

Natalie Chazal; Megan Carr; Andrew Haines; Andrew K Leight; Natalie G Nelson

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2024.116465

Assessing the utility of shellfish sanitation monitoring data for long-term estuarine water quality analysis

Mar Pollut Bull. 2024 May 8:203:116465. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2024.116465. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Natalie Chazal¹, Megan Carr¹, Andrew Haines², Andrew K Leight³, Natalie G Nelson⁴

Affiliations

¹ Biological and Agricultural Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
² North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Marine Fisheries - Shellfish Sanitation and Recreational Water Quality Section, Morehead City, NC, USA.
³ Cooperative Oxford Laboratory, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Oxford, MD, USA.
⁴ Biological and Agricultural Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA; Center for Geospatial Analytics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA. Electronic address: nnelson4@ncsu.edu.

PMID: 38723549
DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2024.116465

Abstract

Regular testing of coastal waters for fecal coliform bacteria by shellfish sanitation programs could provide data to fill large gaps in existing coastal water quality monitoring, but research is needed to understand the opportunities and limitations of using these data for inference of long-term trends. In this study, we analyzed spatiotemporal trends from multidecadal fecal coliform concentration observations collected by a shellfish sanitation program, and assessed the feasibility of using these monitoring data to infer long-term water quality dynamics. We evaluated trends in fecal coliform concentrations for a 20-year period (1999-2021) using data collected from spatially fixed sampling sites (n = 466) in North Carolina (USA). Findings indicated that shellfish sanitation data can be used for long-term water quality inference under relatively stationary management conditions, and that salinity trends can be used to investigate management-driven bias in fecal coliform observations collected in a particular area.

Keywords: Fecal indicator bacteria; Long-term monitoring; Mann-Kendall trend analysis; Shellfish sanitation; Water quality.