Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2010KY147B

Mobililty of Nitrogen-15 enriched E. coli within the Royal Spring basin, Kentucky

Institute: Kentucky
Year Established: 2010 Start Date: 2010-03-01 End Date: 2011-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $3,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $7,919

Principal Investigators: Alan Fryar

Project Summary: The Cane Run watershed is located in Scott and Fayette counties in central Kentucky. This watershed drains an area of 28,562 acres including both urban and rural landscapes. The groundwater basin that underlies much of the watershed drains to Royal Spring, which provides water for the city of Georgetown. We intend to conduct tracer tests using fluorescent dye (tentatively, rhodamine WT) and Nitrogen-15 labeled E. coli bacteria along the Royal Spring trunk conduit beneath Cane Run. We anticipate that these traces will provide an improved understanding of the movement of fecal bacteria in karst aquifers. There have been few studies of bacterial survival in karst environments and to our knowledge the proposed research would be the first study of labeled bacterial transport in groundwater over distances on the order of 10 km in a karst system.