Relationship Between the Bacterial Abundance and Production with Environmental Factors in a Subtropical Karst Reservoir

: In recent years, the increasing scarcity of water resources and eutrophication of water have become more serious. Reservoirs that are far from big cities have become important sources of drinking water and were targets of research and protection. Therefore, the abundance and production of bacteria and their correlations with environmental factors were investigated in the Dalongdong Reservoir, Shanglin County, Guangxi Province, using Quantitative Real-time PCR technology and the 14C tracer technique. The Dalongdong Reservoir is a typical subtropical karst reservoir. The bacterial abundance of the surface water decreased from the upstream to the downstream along the water flow direction and then increases. The vertical distribution of the bacterial abundance at each sampling site shows a similar trend; it is the highest in the surface water and the lowest on the bottom. The correlation analysis results show that the temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), chlorophyll-a, dissolved oxygen (DO), and other environmental factors significantly correlate with the bacterial abundance, indicating that these parameters are the main factors limiting the bacterial abundance in this region. The bacterial production is positively correlated with the pH, DOC, and permanganate index; negatively correlated with the conductivity and DIC; and significantly positively correlated with DO. The principal component analyses (PCA) shows that the environmental factors affecting the bacterial abundance and bacterial production can be grouped into two PCAs. PCA1 includes the temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, DIC, DO, chlorophyll-a, DOC, and permanganate index and PCA2 includes TN and TP. The bacterial abundance and production in the Dalongdong Reservoir are affected by various environmental factors and photosynthetic bacteria are the important contributors to the production of organic carbon.