Notice of RetractionEffect of Petroleum Contamination on Soil Microbial Community in Oil Storage Pit of Daqing Oilfield in China

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

In this study, we evaluated the impacts of petroleum contamination on the physiochemical properties and microbial community functional diversity of different soil layers (surface soil and the soil layers of 10 cm and 20 cm). The contaminated soil was sampled in oil storage pits of Daqing Oilfield exploited in 1972 in Heilongjiang province, China. The physiochemical properties and microbial diversity were analyzed by using routine analyses and Biolog-Eco technology, respectively. The total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) concentration of the contaminated soil was correlated with soil depth, with the highest TPH concentration in the 10 cm soil layer, followed by the 20 cm soil layer and the surface soil. Petroleum hydrocarbons significantly influenced the physiochemical properties of the contaminated soil compared to the uncontaminated soil, which increased soil pH, but decreased organic matter (OM), contents of total and available N, P, K. For the contaminated soils, the concentrations of OM, total N and available N were higher in the 10 cm soil layer than in the surface soil and in 20 cm layer. However, there was no significant difference in total and available P, K concentration in different soil layers. The oil storage pit with high TPH concentration had higher AWCD values compared with oil storage pit with low TPH concentration in different soil layers. Increases in functional diversity indices of the soil microbial community in each soil layer were regarded as the result of petroleum contamination.