Major Long-Term Objectives:

1. Determine long-term chronic influences of major spills on the planktonic and benthic food webs of receiving waters.

2. Examine the nature of system recovery from major spills, focusing on algal communities and on life history stages of higher trophic levels (e.g., shellfish).

3. Examine the impacts of currently acceptable practices of spraying/disposal on the water quality and food webs of receiving waters.

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Short-Term Objectives:

1. Characterize plumes of major spills, once in receiving waters, for nutrients, fecal coliforms, pathogens to human health, and suspended sediments.

2. Establish "decline curves" for these constituents in receiving waters versus sediments.

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Accomplishments:

1. Led the first research team in the state known to have characterized impacts of major animal waste spills (hog, poultry) in receiving waters.

2. Also the first research team to characterize impacts of such spills on riverine and estuarine sediments.

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Significance:

High-intensity animal industries have developed in North Carolina without scientific understanding about the impacts of currently acceptable waste disposal practices on the water and biological quality of receiving aquatic systems. My efforts represent the first steps to characterize effects of large animal raw waste spills on both water-column and benthic communities of receiving streams and estuaries in terms of nutrients, fecal coliforms,' suspended solids, algal abundance, shellfish abundance, and fish kills.

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Future Plans:

1. Examine long-term chronic influences of both large animal waste spills and diffuse waste leakage on receiving streams and estuaries, including benthic as well as planktonic communities.

2. Assess survival of fecal coliforms in surficial sediments, indicating the presence of hazardous pathogens for human health, and the frequency with which these microbial populations are remixed into the water column.

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Published by: North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service

Publication Number:

Last Electronic Revision: January 1997 (MSD)

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