Browsing by Subject "hypoksia"

The Baltic Sea is one of the most extensive oxygen-depleted (hypoxic) areas. The hypoxic areas in the Baltic Sea are becoming more common due to climate change and anthropogenic eutrophication. The influence of hypoxia on sediment communities is in general well known, but the impact of different degrees of hypoxic stress on the functions of benthic microbial communities is less studied. Although the impact of microbes on benthic ecosystem functioning can be significant, the changes caused by hypoxia disturbed microbial communities are not well known. These changes can affect other organisms and environment globally because microbes influence nutrient and element cycles. Also some microbial species produce toxic hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in anaerobic conditions. This study investigated sandy sediments taken from the Baltic Sea whose organism communities were artificially disturbed by covering sediment plots with oxygen impermeable plastic sheets. Covering induced artificially hypoxia (< 2 ml O2 l-1) of different durations for 0, 3, 7 and 48 days. This thesis concentrated studying the bacterial communities of the disturbed sediments. Change in bacterial community was observed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (T-RFLP). The aim was find out how bacterial community composition and diversity changed in sediments influenced by increasing hypoxic disturbance. The conducted observations indicated how changes within the bacterial community can influence other organisms and environment. Results obtained by permutational ANOVA testing indicated that bacterial community composition, especially bacterial biodiversity, was influenced by artificially induced hypoxia lasting 48 days. A slight decrease in bacterial diversity was seen already after 7 days hypoxia. Overall bacterial community was more resistant to disturbance than animal fauna, which has been studied in parallel research (Villnäs ym. 2012). H2S-producing deltaproteobacteria (e.g. Desulfatiferula, Desulfovibrio and Desulfofustis) were observed in sediments which were disturbed the longest, which explains the H2S production detected in chemical data of the parallel study. This may have caused a decrease in macrofauna. Amounts of sulfate-reducing bacteria correlated with increases in ammonium and silicate, which may increase both eutrophication and anoxia in an aquatic system. Results indicated that bacterial community was disturbed due to increasing hypoxia, and changes in the bacterial community correlated with changes in chemical parameters. Observations suggest that changes in the composition of a bacterial community may influence an entire ecosystem. The composition of microbial communities should be taken into account when studying the impact of environmental disturbances on various ecosystems.