Wastewater Discharge and Its Impacts on Microbial Communities in Receiving Waters

Dear Colleagues,

As wastewater treatment plants discharge large volumes of treated effluent into surface waters, it is crucial to understand how this impacts indigenous microbial communities. Effluents contain complex mixtures of organic matter, nutrients, chemicals, and microbes that can alter the microbial ecology and water quality. Studying community composition changes and gene flow dynamics provides insight into microbial adaptation and reveals threats to ecosystem stability. Tracking the transmission of antimicrobial resistance is critical to managing public health risks. Overall, characterizing effluent discharge impacts on microbial communities will enable better prediction of ecological changes, inform mitigation strategies, optimize wastewater treatment, and enable the evaluation of the process efficacy to balance human activities and environmental protection.

We welcome review and research articles studying how wastewater discharge influences the microbial community composition, diversity, dynamics, and functionality. Both field studies and laboratory-based approaches are encouraged. Suggested sub-topics include:

• Immediate and long-term impacts of effluent contents (organic matter, nutrients, metals, pharmaceuticals, etc.) on indigenous microbial communities
• Threats of wastewater discharge to the ecosystem and human health
• Mitigation strategies to minimize ecological impacts from wastewater discharge
• Fate and transport of wastewater-derived microbes and antimicrobial resistance genes
• Microbial community analysis as a tool for evaluating and improving wastewater treatment
• Modeling approaches to predict impacts on microbial communities

Dr. Jinping Cheng
Guest Editor

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• wastewater effluent
• microbial ecology
• microbial communities
• receiving waters
• water pollution
• pathogens
• antimicrobial resistance