Demonstration of microbial transport into the capillary fringe via advection from below the water table

Abstract

A laboratory experiment is used to provide preliminary evidence that microbes can be advected into the capillary fringe from the region below the water table under steady flow conditions. A flow cell was packed so as to contain both a region for which pore-water pressure was greater than atmospheric pressure (termed ‘below the water table’) and a region, where the pore-water pressure was less than atmospheric with the pores essentially saturated with water (termed the ‘capillary fringe’). Steady flow was then established through maintaining a hydraulic gradient across the medium. Green fluorescent protein (GFP) transformed bacteria ( E. coli JM109) were used to visualize migration of bacteria from below the water table into the capillary fringe. These transformed bacteria fluoresce brightly and readily when excited by standard UV light (395 nm) in 100 mL LB medium with 100 μg/mL ampicillin. The concentrations of bacterial inoculum and oxygen were adjusted to ensure GFPuv expression at a large scale. Results demonstrated that microbes can move into the capillary fringe from below the water table under horizontal hydraulic gradients. Motion from the capillary fringe into the region below the water table was also observed as was the absence of advection through regions of entrapped air below the water table.