JUBHAR C. MANGIMBULUDE, NICO M. VAN STRAALEN AND WILFRED F. M. RÖLING
Abstract
Microbes play an important role in the natural attenuation of surface run-off water from landfills. This study aimed to gain more insight into the functioning of these communities under the conditions of a tropical landfill at Jatibarang, Indonesia, using four complementary approaches: (1) to determine temporal variation in microbial communities over wet and dry seasons in several years (2004-2010) in the leachate collecting system, using cultivation-independent bacterial community fingerprinting; (2) to establish the relation between community structure and leachate hydrochemistry; (3) to determine the presence of anaerobic degraders of aromatic compounds by amplifying fragments of the bamA gene, encoding an enzyme from the anaerobic benzyol-coA metabolic pathway, and; (4) to determine the actual potential for aerobic and anaerobic phenol degradation by a culturing approach. The diversity in bacterial communities in the period of 2004 to 2006 was higher than in the period from 2006 to 2007. While bacterial communities showed large dynamic changes, leachate hydrochemistry changed little over time. The potential for anaerobic aromatics degradation was present in all years and seasons, throughout the leachate collection system. Restriction profiles of bam A fragment at S6 and S8 in the wet season 2007 were different from other years. The Jatibarang leachate microbes were able to degrade phenol under different redox conditions. We conclude that significant potential for natural attenuation is residing in the local microbial communities, despite the fact that the communities themselves were highly dynamic.