Investigating the Microbiota of Stormwater Treatment Areas

Investigating the Microbiota of Stormwater Treatment Areas

One of the negative impacts of agriculture is the imbalance of nutrients in the environment. Such an imbalance of nutrients allows nonnative species of plants and organisms to thrive and native species become out-competed in their natural ecosystem. In an effort to maintain and protect the natural ecosystem the South Florida Water Management District has constructed Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs). STAs are artificial wetlands that remove nutrients that are foreign to the natural ecosystem from water before the water is returned to the ecosystem by utilizing aquatic plants to cleanse contaminants from water. Microorganisms certainly play a role in the filtration of the water as it flows through the STAs. However, this role is not well known as little study has been done on the microorganism populations in these areas. As nutrients flowing to the STAs change during seasons, it is hypothesized that the presence of microorganisms will change with the concentrations of nutrients found in the soil or interstitial water in soils and the filtering efficiency will change as the presence of microorganisms change. To test this hypothesis, we screen for bacteria in soil and water samples from the STAs. This study aims to discover the relationship of the microbiota of STAs to the presence of the nutrients of the water flow.