Master of Science

thesisFecal contaminated waterbodies are detrimental to human and animal health. Therefore, a set of standardized parameters are defined to measure the quality of a waterbody. In fact, in the United States, many waterbodies are considered to be impaired as they do not meet the minimum designated water quality standards defined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A method that is frequently used in the US to measure water quality standards is the FIB (fecal indicator bacteria) method. Though it is widely applied and delivers fast and reliable results, it lacks the ability to discriminate between host sources of fecal contaminants in waterbodies. Microbial source tracking (MST) is a technique that not only can identify a contaminated waterbody but also determine and quantify the source of fecal contaminant. In this research, for the first time in the state of Utah (USA), the MST method was applied in conjunction with the FIB method for assessing the water quality of Jordan River tributaries (JRT). The water quality of 5 tributaries (RBC, EC, LCC, BCC, and MC)was observed/analyzed by sampling the respective sites over a period of time fromApril to August, 2017. Several experimental techniques were utilized to measure the collected samples. These included onsite water nutrient measurements using a nutrient multimeter and ion chromatography, E. coli Colilert test, fecal DNA extraction, cloning and sequencing, primer validation using PCR and gel electrophoresis techniques, and iv qPCR. Both MST and FIB results indicated peak fecal pollution occurring at more developed, urbanized, and impervious sampling locations. MST experiments successfully quantified and discriminated between human and animal fecal pollutants. Moreover, the results reveal that all sites had some amount of human fecal pollution, including the protected site of RBC. While the FIB method indicated MC to be the most fecally polluted site based on E. coli data, MST results revealed that the most fecally polluted sites were LCC and BCC, based on quantification of host-specific primers. The results of this research also suggest a correlation between E. coli and the primers were used in the study