Abstract
The response of purifying capability, enzyme activity, nitrification potentials, and total number of bacteria in the rhizosphere in December to wetland plants, substrates, and earthworms was investigated in integrated vertical flow constructed wetlands (IVFCW). The removal efficiency of total nitrogen (TN), NH4–N, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and total phosphorus (TP) was increased when earthworms were added into IVFCW. A significantly average removal efficiency of N in IVFCW that employed river sand as substrate and in IVFCW that employed a mixture of river sand and Qing sand as substrate was not found. However, the average removal efficiency of P was higher in IVFCW with a mixture of river sand and Qing sand as substrate than in IVFCW with river sand as substrate. Invertase activity in December was higher in IVFCW that used a mixture of river sand and Qing sand as substrate than in IVFCW which used only river sand as substrate. However, urease activity, nitrification potential, and total number of bacteria in December was higher in IVFCW that employed river sand as substrate than in IVFCW with a mixture of river sand and Qing sand as substrate. The addition of earthworms into the integrated vertical flow constructed wetland increased the above-ground biomass, enzyme activity (catalase, urease, and invertase), nitrification potentials, and total number of bacteria in December. The above-ground biomass of wetland plants was significantly positively correlated with urease and nitrification potentials (p < 0.01). The addition of earthworms into IVFCW increased enzyme activity and nitrification potentials in December, which resulted in improving purifying capability.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20141477), Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Agricultural Meteorology (Grant No. JKLAM2012 01) National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40901257), Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars (2014s048), Scientific Research Foundation of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, and a project funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.
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Xu, D., Gu, J., Li, Y. et al. Purifying capability, enzyme activity, and nitrification potentials in December in integrated vertical flow constructed wetland with earthworms and different substrates. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 273–281 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-5734-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-5734-6