ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Terrestrial Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1583149
This article is part of the Research TopicBiogeochemical Processes of Nutrients: Impacts of Global Changes and Human Activities on Microbial Communities in Terrestrial EcosystemsView all 3 articles
Spatio-temporal distribution of soil microbial communities and nutrient availability around a municipal solid waste landfill
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chengdu Huantou Urban Management Services Co., Ltd, Chengdu, China
- 2Tongji University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
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The landfills may have notable ecological impacts on the surrounding environment, yet little is known about the microbial community and nutrient conditions in surrounding soil. Using high-throughput sequencing technology, we analyzed the spatio-temporal distribution of bacterial and fungal communities in soils surrounding a large-scale landfill. The component of landfill waste and twelve soil properties were detected, including four nutritional indices and eight heavy metal elements. Our results revealed landfill-specific enrichment of bacterial genera Pseudomonas (0.13-6.43%), Marmoricola (0.12-4.82%), Sphingomonas (0.64-5.24%) and Nocardioides (0.51-6.3%) and fungal genera Alternaria (0.23-12.85%), Pyrenochaetopsis (0.028-10.12%) and Fusarium (0.24-4.07%). Their relative abundances exhibited significant variations across landfill age gradients and soil depth profiles (p ≤ 0.05). Random forest and structural equal models (SEM) confirmed the direct correlation between soil TOC, heavy metals including Cu, Cd and Pb and microbial diversity. While soil heavy metals mainly exhibited negative effects on microbial diversity, dominant microbial taxa such as Lysobacter, Nocardioides, Pseudopithomyces and Chaetomium showed potential tolerance to heavy metal stress in soil around the landfill. In soil around the landfill, higher concentrations of total nitrogen (TN), available phosphorus (AP) and available potassium (AK) were observed in the upper layers near the aged landfill areas, whereas higher concentration of total organic carbon (TOC) were detected around fresh landfill area. The distribution of microbial taxa and predicted functional profiles were strongly associated with the nutrients availability. The findings revealed that landfill activities influenced the structure and function of microbial community, contributing to the complex spatio-temporal distribution of nutrients in the surrounding soil.
Keywords: Landfill surrounding environment, Microbial Diversity, spatial distribution, Soil nutritional index, functional gene
Received: 25 Feb 2025; Accepted: 23 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhan, Sun, Lan, Zhou, Zhao and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Li Yang, Chengdu Huantou Urban Management Services Co., Ltd, Chengdu, China
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