The term microbial source tracking includes a group of methodologies designed to test the overarching hypothesis that some microorganisms are shed mainly in the waste of the host species that harbor them, and that these host-associated microorganisms are useful for determining the sources of sewage or fecal pollution in water. Over the past twenty years, the dominant methodologies used in the field have changed as we have learned more about the distribution and ecology of the microorganisms or genetic sequences we track in water. Several recent research projects are highlighted on the following pages.

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