Antimicrobial Resistance in Water Systems
A Special Issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441) belonging to the section "Water and One Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 111
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is now recognized as a critical global health threat, with aquatic environments serving as both reservoirs and dissemination pathways for antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), surface waters and groundwater are increasingly documented as hotspots for horizontal gene transfer and resistance selection, yet our understanding of the environmental dimension of AMR remains incomplete.
Recent technological advances—including metagenomic sequencing, wastewater-based epidemiology and biosensor development—have transformed our ability to monitor and characterize environmental resistomes. However, significant gaps persist in standardized surveillance methods and the evaluation of treatment technologies for resistance removal.
This Special Issue invites contributions that advance the science of AMR in aquatic environments—including investigations into the occurrence, fate and ecological risks of antibiotics, ARB and ARGs in rivers, lakes and groundwater; assessments of removal efficiency in drinking water and wastewater treatment processes; development of standardized monitoring and surveillance methods; the evaluation of AMR-driven impacts on aquatic biodiversity, microbial community structure and ecosystem resilience and the exploration of mitigation strategies to safeguard aquatic ecosystems and water resources. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary research that apply One Health approaches to link water quality, ecological integrity and human health outcomes.
Dr. Na Liu
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- antimicrobial resistance (AR)
- antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs)
- aquatic environments
- wastewater treatment
- water quality monitoring
- risk assessment
- one health
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