Hydraulic fracturing has become a well-established and widespread technology for the extraction of oil and natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing fluids (HFFs) are widely varied and contain many chemicals that are toxic to human and ecological health. HFFs are often spilled on surface soils where their fate and transport is uncertain. In this study, six representative mixtures of HFFs were incubated with a surface soil in bench-scale microcosms, and the microbial community was analyzed over 78 days. Chemical oxygen demand decreased over time, although a significant recalcitrant fraction was found for four of the six amended fluids. With Illumina MiSeq sequencing of a 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene amplification and follow-through quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assays, 24 bacterial taxa closely related to known species were identified to be enriched by at least one of the representative HFFs. These taxa are mostly closely related to well-known xenobiotic degraders, however, the composition of the enrichment was highly unique for each representative HFF. Results indicate that the complex mixtures of biocides and other components elicit unique bacterial community responses in the same soil, thus suggesting that the bioremediation pathways of HFF constituents in soils may differ based on exact HFF composition.
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