[Correlations Between Substrate Structure and Microbial Community in Subsurface Flow Constructed Wetlands]

To identify the microbial factors that cause the differences in the purification performance of constructed wetlands with different substrate structures, the relationship between the substrate structure and the microbial community composition in horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetlands (HSSFCWs) was studied by high throughput sequencing. The results revealed that the purification performance of a six-layer constructed wetland (CW6), of which the permeability coefficient gradually increased from the surface layer to the bottom layer, was the highest among the three constructed wetland systems. The average concentrations of COD, TN, NO₃^--N, and NH₄⁺-N in the effluent were 39, 11, 0.35, and 4 mg·L^-1, respectively. The monolayer structure constructed wetland (CW1) had the worst purifying efficiency, with average effluent concentrations of 95, 21, 0.60 and 12 mg·L^-1 for COD, TN, NO₃^--N, and NH₄⁺-N, respectively. The results of the high-throughput sequencing showed that the number of microbial OTUs in multilayer structure wetlands was slightly lower than that in the monolayer structure wetland, but the relative abundance of the dominant phylum Proteobacteria and the nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria in the genus was significantly higher than the monolayer structure wetland. The results of PCA and heatmap indicated that there were significant differences in the spatial distribution of microbes in the genus of Proteobacteria in CW3 and CW6, which facilitated the degradation of pollutants. No significant differences were found in the community structure of CW1.