Watershed urbanization alters the composition and function of stream bacterial communities.

ABSTRACT: Watershed urbanization leads to dramatic changes in draining streams, with urban streams receiving a high frequency of scouring flows, together with the nutrient, contaminant, and thermal pollution associated with urbanization. These changes are known to cause significant losses of sensitive insect and fish species from urban streams, yet little is known about how these changes affect the composition and function of stream microbial communities. Over the course of two years, we repeatedly sampled sediments from eight central North Carolina streams affected to varying degrees by watershed urbanization. For each stream and sampling date, we characterized both overall and denitrifying bacterial communities and measured denitrification potentials. Denitrification is an ecologically important p

SUBMITTER: Wang SY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3155513 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature