Abstract
Aged refuse is widely considered to have certain soil fertility. 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing is used to investigate the microbial community of aged refuse. The aged refuse is found to contain higher soil fertility elements (total nitrogen, total phosphorus, total potassium, etc.) and higher concentrations of heavy metals (Pb, Cd, Zn, and Hg). Taxonomy based on operational taxonomic units (OTUs) shows that Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Chloroflexi, Acidobacteria, and Gemmatimonadetes are the main bacterial phyla in the two soils and there is a palpable difference in the microbial community composition between the two groups of samples. The genera Paramaledivibacter, Limnochorda, Marinobacter, Pseudaminobacter, Kocuria, Bdellovibrio, Halomonas, Gillisia, and Membranicola are enriched in the aged refuse. Functional predictive analysis shows that both the control soil and aged refuse have a high abundance of “carbohydrate metabolism” and “amino acid metabolism”, and show differences in the abundance of several metabolism pathways, such as “xenobiotics biodegradation and metabolism” and “lipid metabolism”. Aged refuse and undisturbed soil show significant differences in alpha diversity and microbial community composition. Multiple environmental factors (Hg, TN, Cr, Cd, etc.) significantly impact microorganisms’ abundance (Marinobacter, Halomonas, Blastococcus, etc.). Our study provides valuable knowledge for the ecological restoration of closed landfills.
Highlights
Three samples of mineralized refuse soils were excavated at a depth of 15 cm from the Xingou municipal solid waste landfill, which is located in the east of Taiyuan in China with a maximum capacity of 3.5 million cubic meters, opened in 1987 and closed in 2007
We found that the aged refuse contained higher soil fertility elements and higher concentrations of heavy metals
The aged refuse harbored a higher diversity of its microbial community, and the genera Paramaledivibacter, Limnochorda, Marinobacter, Pseudaminobacter, Kocuria, Bdellovibrio, Halomonas, Gillisia, and Membranicola were abundant in the aged refuse
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. As the most populous country at present, China is facing tremendous pressure with regard to appropriate methods of municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal. In 2019, China’s population reached 1.4 billion, and the amount of MSW removed and transported reached. 242 million tons (China’s National Bureau of Statistics, 2020). A quarter of MSW is disposed of at landfills [1]. The reduction of annual MSW production and the ecological treatment of historically accumulated waste landfills have become increasingly urgent [2,3]
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