Journal article
Understanding the Impacts of Short-Term Climate Variability on Drinking Water Source Quality: Observations From Three Distinct Climatic Regions in Tanzania
Danlu Guo, Jacqueline Thomas, Alfred Lazaro, Clarence Mahundo, Dickson Lwetoijera, Emmanuel Mrimi, Fatuma Matwewe, Fiona Johnson
GeoHealth | American Geophysical Union | Published : 2019
DOI: 10.1029/2018GH000180
Abstract
Climate change is expected to increase waterborne diseases especially in developing countries. However, we lack understanding of how different types of water sources (both improved and unimproved) are affected by climate change, and thus, where to prioritize future investments and improvements to maximize health outcomes. This is due to limited knowledge of the relationships between source water quality and the observed variability in climate conditions. To address this gap, a 20‐month observational study was conducted in Tanzania, aiming to understand how water quality changes at various types of sources due to short‐term climate variability. Nine rounds of microbiological water quality sam..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The researchers wish to acknowledge the support of the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children for the ethical clearance to conduct the study in Dar es Salaam, Kilombero, and Kondoa regions, Tanzanian Meteorological Agency for providing us with archived data of climate which we used to develop our models, Internal Drainage Basin Water Office for providing us with real time weather and climate data from Kondoa region, and the Department of Water Resources Engineering at The University of Dar es Salaam for providing us a laboratory space and equipment's to conduct our longitudinal study. Additional acknowledgement is due to the World Health Organization Tanzanian country office team and the project management team based in Geneva, Switzerland for providing funds to support the study in Tanzania. We also acknowledge our study participants without whom we would not have got the data. Raw water quality data are held by Ifakara Health Institute Tanzania. Public access is currently restricted until data are postprocessed for complete community deidentification, and a Data Transfer Agreement has been granted by The Government of Tanzania. A statistical summary of the water quality data used in this paper can be found in Supporting Information S1 as well as via online (http://www.hydrology.unsw.edu.au/download/data).The webpage will be updated with the raw water quality data once public access to the data is granted.