Biodegraded peat and ultrafine calcium carbonate result in retained metals and higher microbial diversities in boreal acid sulfate soil

Abstract

To efficiently mitigate bacterial mediated acid and metal discharge from acid sulfate soils, iron and sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms that catalyze the iron sulfide dissolution should be inactivated. An organic carbon source could further be introduced into the soil to promote the growth of iron and sulfur reducing bacteria. In this study, acid sulfate soil was amended with a mobile form of ultrafine calcium carbonate alone or in combination with fractions of peat, sodium acetate, or sodium lactate. The introduction of ultrafine calcium carbonate resulted in a raised pH that appeared to inactivate the acidophiles, but did not reactivate iron or sulfur reducing bacteria. The addition of organic matter resulted in higher microbial diversities and retention of metals, although acid-tolerant and acidophilic microbes still dominated. A low abundance of an iron reducing bacteria was identified in the all treatments with both peat fractions and pure organic carbon compounds. These results indicated that biodegraded peat could be used as an energy source for at least iron reducing bacteria in the acid sulfate soil at the same time as it retains metals in the soil. These findings are of value for further developing mitigation methods for the sustainable use of acid sulfate soils.

Keywords

16S rRNA gene / Microbial community / Organic material / Mitigation

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation (project 201700273 and 201800502), Oiva Kuusisto Säätiö and the PRECIKEM II (Precision chemical treatment of acid sulfate soils for the protection of waters in environmentally sustainable agriculture) project from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development via the Rural Development Programme for Mainland Finland 2014–2020 for funding, administrated by the Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment in Ostrobothnia (project number 10308). M.D. additionally acknowledges the Swedish Research Council Formas (grant number 2018-00760) and the Geological Survey of Sweden (grant number 36-1878/2017) for financial support. Nordkalk is acknowledged for providing EnrichBio and C2 and Vapo Fibers for peat. Jussi Hyvönen is gratefully acknowledged for geochemical analyses. The authors acknowledge support from Science for Life Laboratory and the National Genomics Infrastructure for providing assistance in massive parallel sequencing and computational infrastructure. The computations were performed on resources provided by SNIC through the Uppsala Multidisciplinary Center for Advanced Computational Science (UPPMAX) under Project b2013127.

Conflict of interest

Authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42832-020-0039-1 and is accessible for authorized users.

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