The evaluation of microbial diversity in water and soil samples from Atyrau and Mangystau regions

Abstract

The soil as a natural resource and the habitat of microbial diversity has
a number of global functions in the biosphere. Under the impact of unregulated industrial activity of human in the process of fulfillment of socialeconomic processes soil and water undergo a range of changes that lead to
soil erosion, degradation and water pollution. High levels of human activities to the environment is particularly apparent in the urban areas. Currently,
the soil and water in settlements and rural districts are significantly different
from those in natural ecosystems. There is no doubt that anthropogenic pollution of the environment dictates the need to develop new reliable, shortterm and replicable methods to assess the toxicity of soil and water,which is
major environmental components. The study is devoted to evaluate microbial diversity in soil and water samples from Atyrau and Mangystauregions,
Kazakhstan. According to the results, the microbial landscape in samples
from Atyrau and Mangystauregions showed that the qualitative composition
is rather monotonous, and the number of microorganisms in these samples
does not exceed 104 CFU/g. All this testifies to the fact that the bacterial
landscape in the concerned region is relatively poor both in quantitative
and qualitative composition, which undoubtedly negatively influence on
the processes of natural self-purification of soil ecosystems, as for bacterial
groups as a conditional number of criteria adopted by the value should be
not less than 1 million cells in 1 g of the substrate, i.e. only such number of
microbes may have important ecological value.
Key words: microbial diversity, soil, water, anthropogenic impact,
ecology, bioassay.