Abstract
Structure and Composition of Leachfield Bacterial Communities: Role of Soil Texture, Depth and Septic Tank Effluent Inputs
Highlights
Onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS) rely on biogeochemical processes and ecological interactions that take place in the soil treatment area (STA; known as drainfield or leachfield) to renovate wastewater, many of which are driven by microorganisms
Principal component analysis (PCA) based on the presence or absence of terminal restriction fragments (TRFs) shows that the bacterial communities of unexposed sand (UNX) and septic tank effluent (STE) differs from sand exposed to STE (EXP) (Figure 1)
Our results show that soil type can play an important role in determining the size, composition, and structure of bacterial communities, and in the relative contribution of dominant soil and STE
Summary
Onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS) rely on biogeochemical processes and ecological interactions that take place in the soil treatment area (STA; known as drainfield or leachfield) to renovate wastewater, many of which are driven by microorganisms. Zhou et al [7] examined two sandy soils from the surface (0.05 m) and vadose (1.57 m) zones and found microbial diversity to decrease with depth These studies suggest that the depth at which an STA is built may be an important determinant of the composition of the resulting bacterial community. An understanding of the factors that control the composition and structure of the bacterial community of STAs is important for developing our ability to design systems that renovate water quality in a predictable manner and adjusting system conditions to promote desirable processes To this end, we conducted a mesocosm-scale experiment to (i) evaluate the structure and composition of the bacterial communities of STAs as a function of soil texture and depth below the infiltrative surface; and (ii) to determine the relative contribution of STE and native soil to these bacterial communities. These data, in conjunction with TRFLP data for STE and native soil unexposed to STE, were used to examine the relative contribution of native soil and STE to the resulting STA bacterial communities
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