Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR): An alternative, rapid water quality monitoring tool at a National Park on Lake Michigan.

Description

Data were collected to evaluate the efficacy of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) as a rapid, alternative method for monitoring recreational water at select beaches and rivers of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SLBE), in Empire, Michigan. Water samples were collected between August 4 and September 18, 2014 (N=297) from four locations (Esch Rd, Otter Creek, Platte Bay, and Platte River). The samples were analyzed for indicator bacteria, E. coli and enterococci, by both culture-based (membrane filtration, MF; traditional method) and non-culture based (qPCR; rapid method). Recreational water quality standards (RWQS) and beach action values (BAV) were used as indices to compare water quality standard exceedances for MF and qPCR methods; for enterococci: 70 colony-forming units (MF) and 1,000 calibrator cell equivalents and for E. coli: 235 colony-forming units (MF); currently, there are no established RWQS based for qPCR (i.e., CCE) results. The CultureBasedData data include E. coli and enterococci culture-based bacterial counts. Data from the qpcr_v3 file includes results from quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) method for estimation of E. coli and enterococci counts by DNA-based methods. The Lat_Long file includes information regarding sampling sites at each of the four locations and their corresponding latitude and longitudes.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
55 Landing page for access to the data https://doi.org/10.5066/F77P8XND
55 The metadata original format https://data.usgs.gov/datacatalog/metadata/USGS.5a4cf831e4b0d05ee8c4cae0.xml

Tags

  • bacteria
  • sleeping-bear-dunes-national-lakeshore
  • biota
  • freshwater-ecosystems
  • water-quality
  • polymerase-chain-reaction
  • lake-michigan
  • water-sampling
  • usgs-5a4cf831e4b0d05ee8c4cae0

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