Natural Attenuation at the Former Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Iosco County

Studies of contaminated subsurface environments have revealed healthy and active populations of bacteria and other microorganisms that perform important biodegradative activities at contaminated subsurface sites. Biodegradation is one component of natural attenuation, that in concert with physical and chemical processes, decreases contaminant migration along ground-water flow paths. Understanding biodegradation is particularly important, because of all the processes natural attenuation encompasses, only biodegradation offers the potential to truly convert the contaminants to harmless substances. The project uses new DNA-based methods in order to understand how spatial and temporal variation in bacterial community structure affects the natural biodegradation of fuel and chlorinated solvents. In collaboration with researchers at Michigan State University, spatial and temporal patterns in the distribution and abundance of selected bacterial populations are compared to biogeochemical data collected from well-water analysis. The bacterial information can be collected at practical field scales, so that it can be effectively combined with the modeling approaches used by geochemists and hydrologists. In this way, the physical, chemical and biological components of natural attentuation can be evaluated and modeled together, and more reliable and effective predictions of treatment options can be obtained.

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