Dataset Information

Modeling groundwater nitrate exposure in private wells of North Carolina for the Agricultural Health Study.

ABSTRACT: Unregulated private wells in the United States are susceptible to many groundwater contaminants. Ingestion of nitrate, the most common anthropogenic private well contaminant in the United States, can lead to the endogenous formation of N-nitroso-compounds, which are known human carcinogens. In this study, we expand upon previous efforts to model private well groundwater nitrate concentration in North Carolina by developing multiple machine learning models and testing against out-of-sample prediction. Our purpose was to develop exposure estimates in unmonitored areas for use in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) cohort. Using approximately 22,000 private well nitrate measurements in North Carolina, we trained and tested continuous models including a censored maximum likelihood-based linear model, random forest, gradient boosted machine, support vector machine, neural networks, and kriging. Continuous nitrate models had low predictive performance (R2?

SUBMITTER: Messier KP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6581064 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Modeling groundwater nitrate exposure in private wells of North Carolina for the Agricultural Health Study.

Messier Kyle P KP Wheeler David C DC Flory Abigail R AR Jones Rena R RR Patel Deven D Nolan Bernard T BT Ward Mary H MH

The Science of the total environment 20181105

Unregulated private wells in the United States are susceptible to many groundwater contaminants. Ingestion of nitrate, the most common anthropogenic private well contaminant in the United States, can lead to the endogenous formation of N-nitroso-compounds, which are known human carcinogens. In this study, we expand upon previous efforts to model private well groundwater nitrate concentration in North Carolina by developing multiple machine learning models and testing against out-of-sample predic ...[more]

PMID: 30476830

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Project description:BackgroundClimate change produces extremes in both temperature and precipitation causing increased drought severity and increased reliance on groundwater resources. Agricultural practices, which rely on groundwater, are sensitive to but also sources of contaminants, including nitrate. How agricultural contamination drives groundwater geochemistry through microbial metabolism is poorly understood.MethodsOn an active cow dairy in the Central Valley of California, we sampled groundwater from three wells at depths of 4.3 m (two wells) and 100 m (one well) below ground surface (bgs) as well as an effluent surface water lagoon that fertilizes surrounding corn fields. We analyzed the samples for concentrations of solutes, heavy metals, and USDA pathogenic bacteria of the Escherichia coli and Enterococcus groups as part of a long term groundwater monitoring study. Whole metagenome shotgun sequencing and assembly revealed taxonomic composition and metabolic potential of the community.ResultsElevated nitrate and dissolved organic carbon occurred at 4.3m but not at 100m bgs. Metagenomics confirmed chemical observations and revealed several Planctomycete genomes, including a new Brocadiaceae lineage and a likely Planctomycetes OM190, as well novel diversity and high abundance of nano-prokaryotes from the Candidate Phyla Radiation (CPR), the Diapherotrites, Parvarchaeota, Aenigmarchaeota, Nanoarchaeota, Nanohaloarchaea (DPANN) and the Thaumarchaeota, Aigarchaeota, Crenarchaeota, Korarchaeota (TACK) superphyla. Pathway analysis suggests community interactions based on complimentary primary metabolic pathways and abundant secondary metabolite operons encoding antimicrobials and quorum sensing systems.ConclusionsThe metagenomes show strong resemblance to activated sludge communities from a nitrogen removal reactor at a wastewater treatment plant, suggesting that natural bioremediation occurs through microbial metabolism. Elevated nitrate and rich secondary metabolite biosynthetic capacity suggest incomplete remediation and the potential for novel pharmacologically active compounds.

Dataset Information

Modeling groundwater nitrate exposure in private wells of North Carolina for the Agricultural Health Study.

Publications

Modeling groundwater nitrate exposure in private wells of North Carolina for the Agricultural Health Study.

Similar Datasets

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