Detail Abstract

Microbial communities in subsurface flow wetlands

Abstract

Microbial communities are responsible for the majority of the removal of organic matter in wetlands, making them a key factor for good system performance. However, not many studies performed on wetlands have focused on this aspect. In this paper, a case study is presented, where the microbial communities colonising two laboratory-scale wetlands, one unplanted and one planted, were studied. The functional groups of bacteria present in the two wetlands were found to be very similar, consisting mainly of SRB and methanogens. However, diversity analysis showed that the two systems did not have similar bacterial species, which indicates that systems sharing the same functional bacterial groups cannot be assumed to have equivalent bacterial species.