Metagenomic insights into microbial diversity in a groundwater basin impacted by a variety of anthropogenic activities

Microbial communities in groundwater are diverse and each may respond differently to environmental change. The goal of this study was to investigate the diversity, abundance, and dynamics of microbial communities in impacted groundwater and correlate them to the corresponding land use and groundwater geochemistry, using an Illumina MiSeq platform targeting the V3 and V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene. The resulting MiSeq sequencing revealed the co-occurrence patterns of both abundant and rare microbial taxa within an impacted groundwater basin. Proteobacteria were the most common groundwater-associated bacterial phylum, mainly composed of the classes Gammaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, and Deltaproteobacteria. The phyla detected at less abundances were the Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Planctomycetes, Actinobacteria, OD1, and Nitrospirae. The members of detected groundwater microorganisms involved in natural biogeochemical processes such as nitrification, anammox, methane oxidation, sulfate reduction, and arsenic transformation. Some of the detected microorganisms were able to perform anaerobic degradation of organic pollutants. The resulting PCA indicates that major land usage within the sampling area seemed to be significantly linked to the groundwater microbial distributions. The distinct microbial pattern was observed in the groundwater collected from a landfill area. This study suggests that the combinations of anthropogenic and natural effects possibly led to a unique pattern of microbial diversity across different locations at the impacted groundwater basin.