Biotic nutrient transport

The dynamics of fecal coliforms in coastal waters depends in part on bacterial loading from streams and rivers, mass transport, and bacterial losses due to death and sedimentation. The rates at which they disappear from surface waters depend on many factors such as availability of nutrients, temperature, salinity, turbidity, degree of water mixing, solar radiation, predation, and competition [3,41,47,64,92,97,143]. However, temperature and solar radiation are considered the most important abiotic factors [39,153]. For example, Xu et al. [153] found that temperature, solar radiation, and temperature and insolation combined, explained 31%, 78%, and 87%, respectively, of coliform bacteria dieoff coefficients in a lagoon on a French Island (Noirmountier), in the Atlantic Ocean. Predation by protozoans is a major biotic factor influencing fecal coliform death rates it accounted for 47%-99% of the mortality in the Seine River, France [54,98]. 

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