Microbial community analysis of coastal wetland soil

Coastal wetlands globally are under pressure due to both natural and man-made activities. To determine the impact of these disturbances on wetlands, the background conditions must be established using a wetland that is not impacted by nutrients, contaminants, and natural disturbances. Microbial processes and populations are heavily involved in the maintaining of well-being of wetlands through the numerous biogeochemical processes that they mediate. Incorporation of microbial indicators into wetland assessment and monitoring is thus a promising approach to predict changes in disturbed wetlands. In this study we characterised soil bacterial communities that are naturally present in the transition from freshwater to saline coastal wetlands on subtropical North Stradbroke Island, Queensland, Australia. The main objectives of our study were: i) to characterise the diversity and composition of bacterial communities along a natural transition from freshwater to saline coastal wetlands at two depths and ii) to determine environmental drivers of bacterial diversity and populations that respond to these drives.