Abstract

To investigate the effect of changes in microbial communities on arsenic release in soil, experiments were conducted on arsenic-contaminated soils (F1, G7, and G10). The experiments involved three groups of the experimental sets; ① BAC: sterilized soil + Bacillus fungorum, ② IND: indigenous bacteria, and ③ MIX: indigenous bacteria + B. fungorum, and incubated them for seven weeks using lactate as a carbon source under anaerobic conditions. The experimental results showed that higher concentrations of arsenic were released from the IND and MIX soils, where indigenous bacterial communities existed, compared to BAC. Significantly higher levels of arsenic were released from the G10 soil, which showed higher pH, compared to the F1 and G7 soils. In the G10 soil, unlike other soils, the proportion of As(III) among the released arsenic was also low. These results may be attributed to differences in microbial community composition that vary depending on the soil. By the seventh week, the diversity of microbial species in the IND and MIX soils had significantly decreased, with dominant orders such as Eubacteriales and Bacillales thriving. Bacteroidales in the seventh week of the MIX in the F1 soil, Rummeliibacillus in the seventh week of the IND and MIX of the G7 soil, and Enterobacterales in the IND and MIX of the G10 soil were dominant. At present, it is not known which mechanisms of microbial community changes affect the geochemical behavior of arsenic; however, these results indicate that microbiome in the soil may function as one of the factors regulating arsenic release.

Keywords soil, arsenic, microorganism, indigenous bacteria, microbial community