13 Water Resources and Geohealth: Sources, Fate, Transport, and Remediation of Environmental Contaminants

Friday, 2 April 2021
8:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Southern Company Research & Development Room

CLUSTERS ANALYSIS OF POLLUTION SOURCES BASED ON THE STEROL COMPOSITION

Paper number: 13-11
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 10:55 AM – 11:15 AM

Authors

Abstract

Pollution in waterbodies is a major issue, and researchers work to assess sources of pollution in order to mitigate its impact on the environment. A major source of pollution is from animal fecal matter and sewage effluents, contributing to water quality issues worldwide. Tracking the source of the fecal pollution is necessary, providing the foundation on which to build an effective solution. In this study, we propose to track the fecal pollution sources by the sterol composition and explore the cluster structure of fecal pollution sources according to their sterol signatures. The sterol composition of various animal fecal and effluents were sourced from different peer reviewed journals (n = 10). Various clustering methods including hierarchical clustering analysis are performed on the data to explore the similarity of different fecal pollutions and clusters based on the sterol composition. The results from the analysis reveal that human, dingo, and rosella fecal have the highest proportion of coprostanol, cholesterol and campesterol respectively. Rosella, wastewater effluents, humans, and pigs are shown to have a definite cluster. Overall, our results show that clusters produced by hierarchical clustering can be used in tracking source of fecal pollution and should be adopted in assessing source of fecal pollution.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 53, No. 2

doi: 10.1130/abs/2021SE-362271

© Copyright 2021 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.