TEA Soil Slurries Raw Sequence Reads. TEA Soil Slurries

This study tested the hypothesis that composition of microbial communities in sediment cap environments contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) varies with capping materials and biogeochemistry, and that early changes in taxa abundance can be correlated with PAH oxidation potential. To evaluate this hypothesis, bench scale microcosms were amended with microbial communities enriched from PAH-contaminated sediments and commonly used capping materials under three electron-accepting processes. Naphthalene was selected as model compound, representing low molecular weight PAHs that are highly mobile and easily desorbed in sediment porewater. We evaluated indigenous microbial community responses to the capping materials using the 16S rRNA amplicon surveys.