Runoff inhibitors can be used to suppress soil erosion and nutrient runoff. Their impact on soil ecosystems needs to be assessed. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate effects of runoff inhibitors on metabolic activities of soil microbes using starch, cationic starch, guar gum, xanthan gum, and PAM (polyacrylamide) as carbon sources. Responses of soil microbes to carbon sources were analyzed using Biolog EcoPlate. Soil was treated with each carbon source at 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0%. Carbon utilization was measured every week for three weeks. Average well color development (AWCD) was increased in the group treated with starch at 0.5 or 1.0% at 3 weeks after treatment. Effect of cationic starch was different depending on treatment period. This effect decreased at 3 weeks after treatment. Guar gum increased AWCD at all concentrations. Reactions of microbes were different depending on the type of carbon source. Xanthan gum increased AWCD at all concentrations, although amino acid decomposition showed no significant difference. On the other hand, PAM decreased AWCD at all concentrations. The Shannon H index representing functional diversity showed a tendency similar to that of AWCD for all treatments. These results indicate that soil treatments can have secondary effects on metabolic function of soil microbes and physical properties of soil.

To get more comprehensive understandings about the microbial diversity near the seawater of Ulleung Island, East sea of Korea, the bacterial identification base on 16S rDNA and their carbon source utilization patterns were analysed through the six surface water samples collected at June 23 to 25, 2007. The results are as follows; the population densities of aerobic heterotrophic and oligotrophic bacteria were from 1.9±0.6×104~6.3±0.7 ×104 cfu ml−1 and from 1.7±0.4×103~2.5±0.4×103 cfu ml−1 during sampling periods, respectively. Among 121 isolated stains, the dominant taxa are Pseudoalteromonas spp. (30 colonies) and Alteromonas spp. (17 colonies). Thirty-senven species-level strains base on 16S rDNA sequencing data are identified, which comprised Gammaproteobacteria (14 strains), Alphaproteobacteria (6 strains), Flavobacteria (6 strains), Actinobacteridae (4 strains), Firmicutes (4 strains), Deinococci (2 strains), Betaproteobacteria (1 strains). The carbon utilization patterns by assay of Biolog-microplate, α-D-glucose are used by 88.9% of the 27 strains of Gram-negative bacteria and more than 80% of them also consumed L-arabinose, D-trehalose, L-alanine, and pyruvic acid methyl ester. On the other hand, all the 10 strains of Gram-positive bacteria used α-D-glucose, and more than 80% of them also exploited maltose, palatinose, D-trehalose, turanose, D-xylose, and pyruvic acid.