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Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management 12(1) (2024) 101--113 | DOI:10.5890/JEAM.2024.03.006

Bei Nie, Yuhong Zeng, Xiaofeng Zhang

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Abstract

As the zone of direct interaction between terrestrial and aquatic environments, riparian zones can be seen as buffers for sediment loading. Sediments can be recognized as an in-channel source of bacterial contamination, and these bacteria can adsorb to sediment or release from riverbed. Traditionally the fate and transport of Escherichia coli (\textit{E. coli}) can be predicted by assuming a uniform bed layer with single characteristic grain size and the same amount of \textit{E. coli} attached to sediment particles, yet the physicochemical properties of sediment and its effects on \textit{E. coli }have not been fully characterized. To better evaluate the relationship between \textit{E. coli} and sediment particles, a one-dimensional model was developed to assess the fate and transport of absorbed \textit{E. coli}. The streambed was divided into a freshly deposited layer and a parent layer due to the different \textit{E. coli} concentration levels in the sediment. Each bed layer consisted of two parts of non-cohesive and cohesive sediment with a bacterial decay constant ratio \textit{$\lambda$}${}_{k}$. This model is practical and tractable to estimate the downstream \textit{E. coli} concentration under disparate bacterial conditions, and the predictions are approximately 0.5 to 2 times the two sets of field measurements. The results show that considering the difference in the \textit{E. coli} concentration between historical riverbed accumulation and fresh deposition could improve the estimation of export bacterial concentration. Besides, the predictions invariably under-predict the \textit{E. coli }concentrations when supposed that bed was composed of only cohesive sediment, while the results are overestimated when supposed only non-cohesive. The applications of this model suggest that in further prediction and management of microbial pollution, the contribution of sediment composition and different bed layers cannot be ignored.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Water Conservancy Science and Technology Innovation Project of Guangdong Province (2017-05,2016-03), Water Conservancy Science and Technology Project of Hunan Province (No. XSKJ2021000-06).

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