• Abundance and Diversity of Microbial Communities in the Coastal Aquifers in Songji Lagoon, South Korea

  • Jung-Yun Lee1,2·Dong-Hun Kim1*·Woo-Hyun Jeon1·Hee Sun Moon1

  • 1Groundwater Environment Research Center, Climate Change Response Division,
    Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Daejeon 34132, Republic of Korea
    2Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju 28644, Republic of Korea

  • 송지호 해안 대수층 미생물 군집의 풍부도 및 다양성

  • 이정윤1,2·김동훈1*·전우현1·문희선1

  • 1한국지질자원연구원 기후변화대응연구본부 지하수환경연구센터
    2충북대학교 생명시스템학과

  • This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The Songji lagoon is brackish environment with a mixture of saline and fresh water, and the interaction of groundwater-lagoon water creates a physicochemical gradient. Although some studies have been conducted on the hydrological and geochemical characteristics of the Songji lagoon, microbial ecological studies have not yet been conducted. In this study, we investigated the effect of groundwater and surface water interaction on water quality as well as microbial community changes in the Songji Lagoon using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Hydrochemical analyses show that samples were classified as 5 hydrochemical facies (HF) and hydrochemical facies evolution (HFE) revealed the intrusion phase was more dominant (57.9%) than the freshening phase (42.1%). Higher microbial diversity was found in freshwater in comparison to saline water samples. The microbial community at the phylum level shows the most dominance of Proteobacteria with an average of 37.3%, followed by Bacteroidota, Actinobacteria, and Patescibacteria. Heat map analyses of the top 18 genera showed that samples were clustered into 5 groups based on type, and Pseudoalteromonas could be used potential indicator for seawater intrusion.


Keywords: Lagoon, Coastal aquifer, Microbial diversity, Microbial community, Seawater intrusion

This Article

  • 2023; 28(5): 12-24

    Published on Oct 31, 2023

  • 10.7857/JSGE.2023.28.5.012
  • Received on Sep 7, 2023
  • Revised on Sep 22, 2023
  • Accepted on Oct 6, 2023

Correspondence to

  • Dong-Hun Kim

  • 1Groundwater Environment Research Center, Climate Change Response Division,
    Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Daejeon 34132, Republic of Korea

  • E-mail: donghun@kigam.re.kr