Climate and Land Use Influences on Bacteria Levels in Stormwater
Date
2019
Authors
Xu, Kaifeng
Valeo, Caterina
He, Jianxun
Xu, Zhiying
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Water
Abstract
The influence of climatic variables and land use on fecal coliform (FC) levels in stormwater collected from outfalls throughout southern Vancouver Island between 1995 and 2011 are examined through statistical analyses, Fourier analysis, Multiple Linear Regression (LR) and Multivariate Logistic Regression (MLR). Kendall’s τ-b demonstrated that FC levels were significantly and positively correlated with the amount of residential area within a drainage catchment generating the runoff, and that FC levels were location dependent. Climatic variables of temperature and antecedent dry period length were significantly and positively correlated with FC levels at both the sampling location level and across the region overall. Precipitation and flowrates were negatively correlated with FC levels. Fourier analysis showed that monthly FC levels shared the same 12 month cycle (peaking in July) as precipitation and temperature. MLR modelling was applied by aggregating the LogFC data by order of magnitude. The MLR model shows that the data are subject to different influences depending on the season and as well, the month of the year. The land use and climate analyses suggest that future climate change impact studies attempted on nearshore bacterial water quality should be conducted at the urban catchment scale.
Description
Keywords
stormwater quality, fecal coliforms, Vancouver Island, nearshore areas, bacteria loading, multinomial logistic regression, periodicity analysis, land use impacts, climate impacts
Citation
Xu, K., Valeo, C., He J. & Xu, Z. (2019). Climate and Land Use Influences on Bacteria Levels in Stormwater. Water, 11(12), 2451. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11122451