SUITMA 9: URBANIZATION — CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOIL FUNCTIONS AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES Ecological evaluation of polymetallic soil quality: the applicability of culture-dependent methods of bacterial communities studying Andrey Gorovtsov 1 & Tatiana M. Minkina 1 & Tatiana Morin 2 & Inna V. Zamulina 1 & Saglara S. Mandzhieva 1 & Svetlana N. Sushkova 1 & Vishnu Rajput 1 Received: 15 January 2018 /Accepted: 27 April 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Purpose This work aimed to study the effect of long-term polymetallic contamination on the state and parameters of soil bacterial communities, including the abundance of different groups of culturable bacteria and the activity of nitrification. Materials and methods Monitoring plots were located in the dry lake and surrounding area, which had been formerly used for the discharge of industrial waste. The soils in the 16 plots were characterized by extremely high levels of heavy metal pollution. This study evaluated the main soil physicochemical properties by various methods, total metal contents by X-ray analysis, mobile metal content by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, the abundance of chosen groups of culturable bacteria by inoculation on solid media, and nitrification activity from ammonium and nitrite oxidation rates. Results and discussion High adaptation capacity of microbial communities to long-term pollution was revealed through marked lack of decrease in the abundance of some of the bacterial groups in soils with high contamination levels. Among the bacteria determined by the colony count method, copiotrophic and spore-forming bacteria were the least sensitive to contamination, and actinomycetes were the most sensitive. The high levels of soil pollution with heavy metals had pronounced adverse effects on nitrification activity. The decrease in activity was strongly correlated with pollutant concentrations. The oxidation of nitrite was shown to be more affected by pollution that the oxidation of ammonium. Conclusions Some groups and parameters of culturable microorganisms can be used for soil status estimation under pollution conditions even though they are only a small fraction of the microbial community. The most sensitive parameter was the nitrification rate, while the number of actinomycetes was found to be most promising parameter among the groups of bacteria determined by plate counts. The use of sensitive groups of culturable microorganisms for bioindication purposes is a method, which may provide a cheap and sufficiently reliable tool for large-scale soil monitoring studies. Keywords Bioindication . Culturable bacteria . Polymetallic soil contamination . Nitrification . Soil quality 1 Introduction The soil is a less dynamic component of the biosphere than either the atmosphere or the water environment, leading to its higher potential for accumulation of pollutants, including heavy metals. Soil not only acts as a depot for heavy metals but also serves as a source of contaminant input into food webs through the uptake of these elements by living organism such as plants. Studies of the heavy metal contamination effects on soil and its living communities are of particular importance. They have shown that heavy metal contamination negatively affects both the natural diversity and activity of soil biota (Klimek et al. 2016). However, soil microbial communities have high adaptation capacities that can manifest under chron- ic pollution. These capacities largely depend on the soil prop- erties (Muhlbachova et al. 2015). The degree of this adapta- tion of natural microbial communities affects the remediation potential of the polluted soil and the return of normal Responsible editor: Jizheng He * Andrey Gorovtsov gorovtsov@gmail.com 1 Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-DonStachki Avenue, 194/1, Russia 2 NYC Urban Soils Institute, New York, NY, USA Journal of Soils and Sediments https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-018-2019-y