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Microbial Community Structures and Their Associations with Physical Parameters and Elements in Storage Tank Sediments
Citation:
Lu, J., K. Qin, I. Struewing, D. Lytle, AND N. Ashbolt. Microbial Community Structures and Their Associations with Physical Parameters and Elements in Storage Tank Sediments. Water Quality Technology Conference (WQTC) 2018, Toronto, CANADA, November 11 - 15, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Presented at the Water Quality Technology Conference (WQTC) 2018
Description:
Drinking water (DW) storage reservoirs accumulate sediments that allow microbial communities to establish, proliferate and seed downstream distribution system pipes and biofilms. There is a potential health concern if environmental pathogens are a constituent of these sediment microbes. However, documentations on sediment-derived microbial communities and their relationships to the physical characteristics of DW storage tanks are rare. This study characterized microbial communities in drinking water storage tank sediments collected from the United States to provide insight into possible links to opportunistic pathogens and physical parameters in distribution systems. We analyzed microbial community structures via MiSeq sequencing on forty-six samples from eleven drinking water storage tanks located in nine states across the USA. Rhodocyclaceae, Pseudomonas, Rheinheimera and Mycobacterium were dominant taxa and present in most of the samples, while Burkholderiales, Sphingomonadaceae, Stenotrophomonas and Geothri were dominant only in a few samples. Opportunistic pathogens like Legionella seemed to co-occurr with certain bacterial groups. A number of (~5) distinctly distributed community structures were classified among the different storage tanks. There were significant associations of community structures with the types of percentage of clay, silt and sand, total exchange capacity, TOC and TOM, and even metals. Overall, the physical characteristics of sediments appeared to impact on microbial community structures, warranting further investigation of relationships between mineral elements or corrosions with microbial community structures, and even pathogens.
