Abstract
Karst mountainous areas in Southwest China, the world’s largest bare karst area, are faced with growing water shortages. Rainwater harvesting plays an important role in alleviating water shortage. However, there remains a substantial gap in the research regarding the water quality of tanks. Water samples were seasonally collected from ten tanks to investigate the physicochemical properties, microbial communities, and their key influencing factors. The result showed that pH, turbidity, chroma, DOC, and CODMn exceeded drinking water guidelines. The alkaline pH value and the deterioration of sensory properties was the main feature of tank water, from which the over-standard rate of the uncleaned water tanks was higher. Moreover, principal component analyses suggested that tank water quality was influenced by human activities, catchment areas, and material cycling processes within the tanks, of which in-tank microbial activities were the most important driving factors in water quality variation. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Firmicutes, and Verrucomicrobia were the predominant bacterial phyla in water tanks. Acinetobacter, Cyanobium-PCC-6307, CL500-29-marine-group, Candidatus-Aquiluna, and Exiguobacterium were the most abundant genera. The bacterial communities were significantly affected by the management practices. Higher relative abundance of Cyanobacteria and lower relative abundance of Proteobacteria was detected in the uncleaned tanks, which was a sign of tank water quality deterioration. The microbial community structure was closely related to the environmental factors. There was evidence that the water quality was affected by the existence of a microecosystem dominated by photosynthetic microorganisms in the water tanks. In addition, Acinetobacter, Enterobacter, Pseudomonas, and Legionella identified as the potential opportunistic pathogenic genera were frequently detected but the relative abundances except Acinetobacter were low in the tanks. Overall, our findings indicated that management style influences water quality and bacterial communities of tank water.
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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This study was also supported by International Research Centre on Karst under the Auspices of UNESCO, National Center for International Research on Karst Dynamic System and Global Change (Guilin, China), and Guilin Karst Observation and Research Station of Guangxi (Guilin, China).
Funding
This study was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (42172287, 41977168) and Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (2020GXNSFDA238013).
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Qigang Wang: investigation, methodology, writing—original draft. Guanghui Jiang: investigation, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition. Ziyong Sun: writing—review and editing. Yueming Liang: writing—review and editing. Fan Liu: investigation. Jie Shi: investigation, writing—review and editing.
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Highlights
• The most significant problem relating to tank water quality is high pH value, turbidity, and chroma.
• The in-tank microbial processes caused the deterioration of water quality.
• Water tanks can sustain microecosystem comprising of complex environmental bacteria.
• Management practices deeply affected the tank water quality and bacterial communities.
• In order to improve tank water quality, periodic monitoring and maintenance is required.
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Wang, Q., Jiang, G., Sun, Z. et al. Water quality and microecosystem of water tanks in karst mountainous area, Southwest China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 12948–12965 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-31959-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-31959-1