EPA Method 1600 and Enterolert are used interchangeably to measure Enterococcus for fecal contamination of public beaches, but the methods occasionally produce different results. Here we assess whether these differences are attributable to the selectivity for certain species within the Enterococcus group. Both methods were used to obtain 1279 isolates from 17 environmental samples, including in...

Urbanism directly affects the hydrological cycle. One of the ways to manage runoffs in urban areas that is considered nowadays is green roof creation. Green roof is mainly created in humid and semi-humid areas, and efficiency of green roofs in arid and semi-arid areas has attracted less attention. In the current study, to evaluate the effect of green roof in arid and semi-arid to reduce runoff,...

Zhang Y., Feng M.M., Yang J.Y., Zhao T.N., Wu H.L., Shi C.Q., Shen Y. (2015): Effects of soil cover and protective measures on reducing runoff and soil loss under artificial rainfall. Soil & Water Res., 10: 198–205. The hazards from wind, sand, and soil erosion caused by human activities, such as residue slopes in abandoned urban mines, have resulted in a vicious circle of environmental degrada...

As forests, agricultural fields, and suburban and urban lands are replaced with impervious surfaces resulting from development, the necessity to recover green space is becoming increasingly critical to maintain environmental quality. Vegetated or green roofs are one potential remedy for this problem. Establishing plant material on rooftops provides numerous ecological and economic benefits, inc...

A simple spreadsheet model was used to evaluate potential water quality benefits of high-density development. The question was whether the reduced land consumed by higher density development (vs. standard suburban developments) would offset the worse water quality generated by a greater amount of impervious surface in the smaller area. Total runoff volume and per acre loadings of total phosphor...

Darwin Harbour in northern Australia is an estuary in the wet-dry tropics subject to increasing urbanization with localized water quality degradation due to increased nutrient loads from urban runoff and treated sewage effluent. Tropical estuaries are poorly studied compared to temperate systems and little is known about the microbial community-level response to nutrients. We aimed to examine t...

In this paper, a planning analysis of implementing low impact development (LID) type of stormwater best management practices (BMPs) for urban runoff control is presented. The Beijing Olympic Village (BOV) residential area in China was used as a case study. The original BOV stormwater system incorporated some LID BMPs such as porous pavements, green roofs and rainwater cisterns. After the 2008 O...

Intensive automobile use, weathering of building materials, and atmospheric deposition contribute lead, copper, zinc, and other heavy metals to urban and roadway runoff. Bioretention is a low-impact-development best management practice that has the potential to improve stormwater quality from developed areas. The practice represents a soil, sand, organic matter, and vegetation-based storage and...

In urban catchments of arid central Arizona, we investigate how the export of mineral and organic nitrogen (N) in storm runoff is regulated by interactions between local landscape characteristics and broader scale storm features. First, we test whether N export is more a function of (1) processes that affect N concentration in runoff or (2) the propensity of the catchment to convey rainfall as ...

Freshwater estuaries throughout the Great Lakes region receive stormwater runoff and riverine inputs from heavily urbanized population centers. While human and animal feces contained in this runoff are often the focus of source tracking investigations, non-fecal bacterial loads from soil, aerosols, urban infrastructure, and other sources are also transported to estuaries and lakes. We quantifie...