Dynamics of Hydrology and Anaerobic Hydrocarbon Degrader Communities in A Tar-Oil Contaminated Aquifer.

ABSTRACT: Aquifers are typically perceived as rather stable habitats, characterized by low biogeochemical and microbial community dynamics. Upon contamination, aquifers shift to a perturbed ecological status, in which specialized populations of contaminant degraders establish and mediate aquifer restoration. However, the ecological controls of such degrader populations, and possible feedbacks between hydraulic and microbial habitat components, remain poorly understood. Here, we provide evidence of such couplings, via 4 years of annual sampling of groundwater and sediments across a high-resolution depth-transect of a hydrocarbon plume. Specialized anaerobic degrader populations are known to be established at the reactive fringes of the plume. Here, we show that fluctuations of the groundwater table w

SUBMITTER: Pilloni G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6406676 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature