The investigation of the physiochemical factors and bacterial communities indicates a low-toxic infectious risk of the Qiujiang River in Shanghai, China.

ABSTRACT

The overall water quality of urban rivers is closely related to the community structure and the physiochemical factors in them. In this study, the bacterial communities and physiochemical factors of the Qiujiang River, an important urban river in Shanghai, were explored. Water samples were collected from nine sites of the Qiujiang River on November 16, 2020. The water quality and bacterial diversity were studied through physicochemical detection, microbial culture and identification, luminescence bacteria method, and 16S rRNA Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing technology. The water pollution of the Qiujiang River was quite serious with three water quality evaluation indexes, including Cd2+, Pb2+, and NH4+-N, exceeding the Class V standard set by the Environmental Quality Standards for Surface Water (China, GB3838-2002), while the luminescent bacteria test indicated low toxicity of nine sampling sites. Through 16S rRNA sequencing, a total of 45 phyla, 124 classes, and 963 genera were identified, in which Proteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Limnohabitans were the most abundant phylum, class, and genus, respectively. The Spearman correlation heatmap and redundancy analysis showed that the bacterial communities in the Qiujiang River were correlated with pH; the concentrations of K+, and NH4+-N, and the Limnohabitans were significantly correlated with the concentrations of K+, and NH4+-N in the Zhongyuan Road bridge segment. In addition, opportunistic pathogens Enterobacter cloacae complex and Klebsiella pneumoniae in the samples collected in the Zhongyuan Road bridge segment and Huangpu River segment, respectively, were successfully cultured. The Qiujiang River was a heavily polluted urban river. The bacterial community structure and diversity were greatly affected by the physiochemical factors of the Qiujiang River, and it displayed low toxicity while a relatively high infectious risk of intestinal and lung infectious diseases.