Dear Colleagues,

Preserving the quality and integrity of water resources is a vital component of ensuring the health and well-being of people and ecosystems worldwide. However, with rapid urbanization and poor planning of large scale development, this has resulted in massive deterioration of much of the world’s precious water resources. More than 80% of wastewater resulting from human activities is discharged into rivers or seas without any pollution removal, and at least 1.8 billion people globally use a source of drinking water that is fecally contaminated. These depressing statistics have been the impetus for the UN Sustainable Development Goal No 6, which seeks to ensure access to clean water and sanitation for all.

As part of this effort, maintaining the microbial quality of water resources is a critical issue that has to be addressed. Water used for potable water supply, irrigation, agriculture, aquaculture, and recreation is already under severe pressure, and innovative and affordable solutions need to be developed and implemented to protect water. This issue is even more challenging in the uncertainty of climate change and global warming. Climate change triggers extreme weather events that increase the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts, leading to fluctuations and unreliability in water supply. Such changes in the water cycle can potentially lead to a deterioration in water quality, as the occurrence, fate, and transport of harmful microorganisms (including pathogens and toxic algae) are intimately associated with changes in runoff, sedimentation, stratification, mixing, and temperature regimes. These impacts of climate change can exponentially amplify an already critical situation and severely negatively impact people and infrastructure, particularly when coupled with population growth, rapid economic development, and intensified land use.

The aims of this Special Issue are to bring together current trends in:

• Microbial detection methods for surveillance and assessment of water safety and source tracking;
• Occurrence data from diverse water resources used for water supply, agriculture, aquaculture, and recreation;
• Mechanisms of survival and fate of pathogens and harmful algae;
• Modeling and prediction of risks of microbial contaminants.

It is envisioned that this Special Issue will capture new knowledge on diverse water resources from many different countries, highlighting particular issues of concern with respect to climate change. Sharing this information will help to identify and generate solutions to better manage and protect microbial water quality on a global scale and, ultimately, protect water resources, ecosystems, and public health.

Dr. Karina Gin
Dr. Laurence Glass-Haller
Dr. Shin Giek Goh
Guest Editors

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• pathogens
• water resources
• microbial safety
• water quality
• climate change