Natural attenuation of contaminated marine sediments from an old floating dock Part II: Changes of sediment microbial community structure and its relationship with environmental variables

Ya Fen Wang, Nora Fung Yee Tam

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Changes of microbial community structure and its relationship with various environmental variables in surface marine sediments were examined for a one-year period after the removal of an old floating dock in Hong Kong SAR, South China. Temporal variations in the microbial community structure were clearly revealed by principal component analysis (PCA) of the microbial ester-linked fatty acid methyl ester (EL-FAME) profiles. The most obvious shift in microbial community structure was detected 6. months after the removal of the dock, although no significant decline in the levels of pollutants could be detected. As determined by EL-FAME profiles, the microbial diversity recovered and the predominance of gram-negative bacteria was gradually replaced by gram-positive bacteria and fungi in the impacted stations. With redundancy analysis (RDA), the concentration of total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) was found to be the second important determinant of microbial community structure, next to Time. The relative abundance of 18:1ω9c and hydroxyl fatty acids enriched in the PAH hot spots, whereas 16:1ω9 and 18:1ω9t were negatively correlated to total PAH concentration. The significant relationships observed between microbial EL-FAME profiles and pollutants, exampled by PAHs in the present study, suggested the potential of microbial community analysis in the assessment of the natural attenuation process in contaminated environments.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)95-103
Number of pages9
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Volume423
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Apr 2012
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • EL-FAME analysis
  • Microbial community
  • Natural attenuation
  • Ordination analysis
  • PAH

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