https://phys.org/news/2018-05-scientists-microbial-gauge-river.html

Results of the study have been published in the journal Water Resources Research.

"There is a seasonality to the microbial communities in these rivers and as the rivers rise and fall with the seasons, that microbial profile changes," said Byron Crump, an ecologist and biogeochemist with OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and co-author on the study. "These rivers may share some of the same taxa, or types of bacteria, but abundance of the taxa is different and changes with the flow."