Paper
Fate and Transport of Cryptosporidium parvum Under Small-Scale Rainfall Simulator
- Authors:
- TTheresa B. Kuhlenschmidt; Mark S. Kuhlenschmidt; Daniel J. Koch; Paul C. Davidson; Prasanta K. Kalita
- Abstract
- Vegetated filter strips (VFS) are effective in reducing sediment, nutrient, and pathogenic contamination from livestock production facilities to water resources. However, more work is needed to determine the physical parameters of VFS that affect the reduction of pathogens like Cryptosporidium parvum (C. parvum). Due to the large numbers of organisms required for adequate measurement of recovery and transport rates, as well as the necessity to dispose of pathogen-contaminated soil after each experiment, large-scale soil beds are not practical. Laboratory-scaled soil beds (0.31 m x 0.61 m x 0.15 m) were designed in this study and used in conjunction with a small-scale rainfall simulator to investigate the effect of vegetation and other parameters (e.g. slope, soil type, and rainfall intensity) on surface and near-surface transport of C. parvum in the soil. This study confirms that VFS are very effective in controlling C. parvum transport in surface runoff with reductions as high as 97%. In addition, the small-scale system developed represents the trends observed in previous studies using field-applicable, large-scale simulators. This indicates the small-scale, laboratory-sized system can be used to determine optimum conditions for VFS allowing for site-specific design of VFS to minimize pathogen contamination from animal production facilities.
- Keywords
- Water Quality; Public Health
- StartPage
- 92
- EndPage
- 99
- Doi