The spatial variations of correlation between microbial diversity and groundwater quality derived from a riverbank filtration site, northeast China

Li Meng; Rui Zuo; Jin-Sheng Wang; Jie Yang; Qiao Li; Minhua Chen

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135855

The spatial variations of correlation between microbial diversity and groundwater quality derived from a riverbank filtration site, northeast China

Sci Total Environ. 2020 Mar 1:706:135855. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135855. Epub 2019 Dec 2.

Authors

Li Meng¹, Rui Zuo², Jin-Sheng Wang¹, Jie Yang¹, Qiao Li¹, Minhua Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Engineering Research Center of Groundwater Pollution Control and Remediation, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100875, China.
² College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Engineering Research Center of Groundwater Pollution Control and Remediation, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: zuo1101@163.com.

PMID: 31864995
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135855

Abstract

To identify the relationship between microbial communities and groundwater quality parameters, especially typical groundwater contaminants including ammonium (NH₄⁺), iron (Fe²⁺), and manganese (Mn²⁺), groundwater samples and aquifer media were collected from a riverbank filtration (RBF) site in Harbin city, northeast China. The structures of the microbial communities of aquifer media at different depths were illustrated through 16S rRNA sequencing using the Illumina MiSeq platform, and the correlation between microbial communities and water quality parameters was quantitatively demonstrated by redundancy analysis (RDA). The results revealed that the diversity of microbial communities decreased along the groundwater flow path at the south bank of Songhua river. The richness and diversity in the unsaturated zone (0-5 m) were significantly higher than those in the saturated zone (5-50 m) because of physiochemical properties of aquifer media and the redox environment in the RBF system. Core taxa, which were significantly related to the biotransformation behavior of iron, manganese, and ammonium, were Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, Ochrobactrum, Sphingobium, and Sphingomonas. RDA results indicated that the critical physiochemical parameters that significantly influenced the composition of microbial communities were different in the saturated and unsaturated zones, and the total organic carbon (TOC), electrical conductivity (EC), nitrate (NO₃^-), and manganese (Mn²⁺) levels were the four principal factors affecting the function and composition of microbial communities in the whole RBF system. Proteobacteria, Sphingomonadales, and Sphingobium were the dominant bacteria at the phylum, order, and genus levels with 39.8%, 59.2%, and 65.3% contribution to the overall groundwater quality, respectively. The results obtained from this study should improve the understanding of the relationship between the structure of microbial communities (especially, bacteria related to the biotransformation of NH₄⁺, Fe²⁺, and Mn²⁺) and physiochemical parameters.

Keywords: 16S rRNA genes; Groundwater; Microbial diversity; RBF; Redundancy analysis (RDA).

MeSH terms

China
Filtration
Groundwater*
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S
Rivers

Substances

RNA, Ribosomal, 16S