Groundwater biofilm dynamics grown in situ along a nutrient gradient.

This paper describes the in situ response of groundwater biofilms in an alluvial gravel aquifer system on the Canterbury Plains, New Zealand. Biofilms were developed on aquifer gravel, encased in fine mesh bags and suspended in protective columns in monitoring wells for at least 20 weeks. Four sites were selected in the same groundwater system where previous analyses indicated a gradient of increasing nitrate down the hydraulic gradient from Sites 1 to 4.

Appraising bacterial strains for rapid BOD sensing--an empirical test to identify bacterial strains capable of reliably predicting real effluent BODs.

The measured response of rapid biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) biosensors is often not identical to those measured using the conventional 5-day BOD assay. This paper highlights the efficacy of using both glucose-glutamic acid (GGA) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) BOD standards as a rapid screen for microorganisms most likely to reliably predict real effluent BODs when used in rapid BOD devices. Using these two synthetic BOD standards, a microorganism was identified that produced comparable BOD response profiles for two assays, the MICREDOX® assay and the conventional 5-day BOD(5) test.