Soil microbial functional and fungal diversity as influenced by municipal sewage sludge accumulation.

Magdalena Frąc,Karolina Oszust,Stefania Jezierska-Tys,Eucharia Oluchi Nwaichi,Jerzy Lipiec

doi:10.3390/ijerph110908891

Abstract

Safe disposal of municipal sewage sludge is a challenging global environmental concern. The aim of this study was to assess the response of soil microbial functional diversity to the accumulation of municipal sewage sludge during landfill storage. Soil samples of a municipal sewage sludge (SS) and from a sewage sludge landfill that was 3 m from a SS landfill (SS3) were analyzed relative to an undisturbed reference soil. Biolog EcoPlatesTM were inoculated with a soil suspension, and the Average Well Color Development (AWCD), Richness (R) and Shannon-Weaver index (H) were calculated to interpret the results. The fungi isolated from the sewage sludge were identified using comparative rDNA sequencing of the LSU D2 region. The MicroSEQ® ID software was used to assess the raw sequence files, perform sequence matching to the MicroSEQ® ID-validated reference database and create Neighbor-Joining trees. Moreover, the genera of fungi isolated from the soil were identified using microscopic methods. Municipal sewage sludge can serve as a habitat for plant pathogens and as a source of pathogen strains for biotechnological applications.

Highlights

The increasing production of sewage sludge from wastewater treatment plants creates significant pressure on the management and disposal of this product [1,2]
The results showed that the Average Well Color Development (AWCD) in the control soil was the lowest and increased under the SS3 and sewage sludge (SS) by 30 and 1000%, respectively (Figure 2A)
This study showed that community-level physiological profiling using Biolog EcoPlatesTM can be used as a sensitive and effective indicator for evaluating microbial functional diversity and microbial communities under sewage sludge accumulation

Summary

Introduction

The increasing production of sewage sludge from wastewater treatment plants creates significant pressure on the management and disposal of this product [1,2]. Wastewater treatment plants generate large quantities of sludge that must be treated and reused or disposed of to protect the environmental and provide maximum benefits [3,4,5]. In Europe, an average sewage sludge dry weight production of 90 g per person per day results from primary, secondary and even tertiary treatment. It is believed that the sludge output will gradually increase in the coming decades due to urbanization and industrialization. According to data from the Polish Central Statistical Office, the amount of sewage sludge in 2010 amounted to 526,100 Mg d.m. according to the forecasts of the National

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Discussion

Conclusion