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

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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