MICROBIAL METABOLISM OF DIESEL FUEL IN A TROPICAL ISLAND AQUIFER
| dc.contributor.advisor | Nelson, Craig E. | |
| dc.creator | Inn, Skye | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-03-13T23:54:54Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-03-13T23:54:54Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2024 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.description | ABSTRACT Petroleum and petroleum-derived product contamination, also known as petroleum hydrocarbon (PH) contamination, has been a significant global environmental issue for decades. While PH degradation has been well studied in soils and surface environments, we still know little about the microbial ecology of PH degradation in subsurface aquatic ecosystems. In November of 2021, the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility on Oʻahu spilled 19,000 gallons of diesel jet fuel (JP-5) into the Red Hill Shaft, potentially contaminating the groundwater aquifer the shaft draws from. However, due to limited knowledge of PH contamination in the context of Oʻahu’s aquifers, it is unknown how microbial communities in groundwater ecosystems can facilitate the degradation of these refined fuels. Therefore, we performed an experiment focused on quantifying the changes of microbial communities in the presence of JP-5 and their ability to transform or remove refined diesel hydrocarbons. Groundwater was incubated with JP-5 for a period of 28 days. Throughout the experiment, samples for scanning excitation-emission fluorescence spectroscopy, flow cytometry, Total Organic Carbon, and microbial community profiling were collected. Fluorescence spectroscopy and dissolved organic carbon allowed for the analysis of dissolved organic matter compositional changes and JP-5 consumption while flow cytometry measurements and DNA allowed for the analysis of microbial growth and community compositional changes. My results demonstrated that diesel fuel addition singular microbe, Novosphingobium (Class Alphaproteobacteria, Family Sphingomonadaceae), which came to numerically dominate the community. Throughout the experiment, Total Organic Carbon decreased along with Total Nitrogen, indicating that the microbes were metabolizing JP-5. While ongoing research is further characterizing the chemical composition of petroleum hydrocarbons as the fuel biodegrades, from this experiment we can infer that our aquifers on Oʻahu can be a valuable source of bacterial bioremediation for future PH contamination events. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10125/110485 | |
| dc.language | eng | |
| dc.rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ | |
| dc.title | MICROBIAL METABOLISM OF DIESEL FUEL IN A TROPICAL ISLAND AQUIFER | |
| dcterms.rights | Inn, Skye | |
| dcterms.type | Text |