Comparison of Bacterial Diversity in Air and Water of a Major Urban Center.

The interaction of wind with aquatic and terrestrial surfaces is known to control the creation of microbial aerosols allowing for their entrainment into air masses that can be transported regionally and globally. Near surface interactions between urban waterways and urban air are understudied but some level of interaction among these bacterial communities would be expected and may be relevant to understanding both urban air and water quality. To address this gap related to patterns of local air-water microbial exchange, we utilized next-generation sequencing of 16S rRNA genes from paired air and water samples collected from 3 urban waterfront sites and evaluated their relative bacterial diversity.