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Effects of Urban Green Infrastructure Designs on Soil Bacterial Community Composition and Function

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Abstract

Green infrastructures (GIs) are environmental designs mainly used to treat urban stormwater runoff pollution. The influences of green infrastructure designs are associated with the bacteria composition and diversity in their soils. This study evaluated the effects of GI design on the composition and function of urban soil bacterial communities in Wuhan, China. GI designs were divided into five different types: engineered (road bioswales, rain gardens, and sunken green spaces) and non-engineered (conventional road greenbelts and urban lawns) designs. The engineered soil combined with the connectivity to urban runoff of the GI design can have strong influences on bacterial community composition and function. Across the five GI design types, we found that the composition of bacterial communities was dominated by Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria at the phylum level. The relative abundance of Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes in the engineered designs was significantly higher than the non-engineered designs and was highest in road bioswales. We detected nine predominant ecological function groups related to the carbon (3 groups) and nitrogen (6 groups) cyclings, with their relative abundance in engineered soils significantly higher than those in non-engineered soils, especially in road bioswales and sunken green spaces. Road bioswales (RBS), with direct connection to urban runoff from street, had the highest denitrification enzyme activity (DEA). DEA of green infrastructures was highly correlated with soil organic carbon, moisture and total nitrogen. Road bioswales appear to function as denitrification hotspots and have higher potential denitrification than other GI designs.

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Abbreviations

CRG:

Conventional road greenbelts

DEA:

Denitrification enzyme activity

GI:

Green infrastructure

OUT:

Operational taxonomic unit

PCA:

Principal component analysis

RDA:

Redundancy analysis

RG:

Rain gardens

RBS:

Road bioswales

SG:

Sunken green spaces

SM:

Soil moisture

TN:

Total nitrogen

TOC:

Total organic carbon

UL:

Urban lawns

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Acknowledgements

We thank Wuhan Wugang Sponge City Construction Project Investment Co. Liyong Cao provided invaluable information on GI design specifications.

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41977155), and the Key Research and Development Program of Hubei Province (2021BCA128).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Liqing Li, Shun Li, Xugao Ma & Yuqing Yan

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  1. Liqing Li
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  2. Shun Li
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Correspondence to Liqing Li.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Author contributions: LL and SL designed the study. SL, XM and YY conducted soil sampling and processing. LL and SL analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Li, L., Li, S., Ma, X. et al. Effects of Urban Green Infrastructure Designs on Soil Bacterial Community Composition and Function. Ecosystems 26, 815–825 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-022-00797-y

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