Response of microbial community function to fluctuating geochemical conditions within a legacy radioactive waste trench environment

Abstract

During the 1960s, small quantities of radioactive materials were co-disposed with chemical waste at the Little Forest Legacy Site (Sydney, Australia) in three-metre-deep, unlined trenches. Chemical and microbial analyses, including functional and taxonomic information derived from shotgun metagenomics, were collected across a six-week period immediately after a prolonged rainfall event to assess how changing water levels impact upon the microbial ecology and contaminant mobility. Collectively, results demonstrated that oxygen-laden rainwater rapidly altered the redox balance in the trench water, strongly impacting microbial functioning as well as the radiochemistry. Two contaminants of concern, plutonium and americium, were shown to transition from solid-iron-associated species immediately after the initial rainwater pulse, to progressively more soluble moieties as reducing conditions were enhanced. Functional metagenomics revealed the potentially important role that the taxonomically-diverse microbial community played in this transition. In particular, aerobes dominated in the first day followed by an increase of facultative anaerobes/denitrifiers at day four. Towards the mid-end of the sampling period, the functional and taxonomic profiles depicted an anaerobic community distinguished by a higher representation of dissimilatory sulfate reduction and methanogenesis pathways. Our results have important implications to similar near-surface environmental systems in which redox cycling occurs.