Secondary successional trajectories of structural and catabolic bacterial communities in oil polluted soil planted with hybrid poplar

Poplars have widely been used for rhizoremediation of a broad range of organic contaminants for the past two decades. Still, there is a knowledge gap regarding the rhizosphere associated bacterial communities of poplars and their dynamics during the remediation process. It is envisaged that a detailed understanding of rhizosphere associated microbial populations will greatly contribute to a better design and implementation of rhizoremediation. In order to investigate the long-term succession of structural and catabolic bacterial communities in oil polluted soil planted with hybrid poplar, we carried out a 2-year field study. Hybrid aspen (Populus tremula x tremuloides) seedlings were planted in polluted soil excavated from an accidental oil-spill site. Vegetated and un-vegetated soil samples were collected for microbial community analyses at 7 different time-points during the course of 2 years and sampling time-points were chosen to cover the seasonal variation in the boreal climate zon...