Molecular and microbial advances in wetland science

The 2nd International Symposium on Wetland Pollutant Dynamics and Control (WETPOL 2007) - held 16-20 September 2007 in Tartu, Estonia - provided a forum for exchange of recent results, ideas and methods among researchers studying the cycling of nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon, heavy metals, and organic pollutants in wetlands. The current special issue contains selected papers from the meeting focused on molecular and microbial techniques and processes of importance for substance cycling and pollutant removal in wetlands. It also includes a review of microbial processes in treatment wetlands that gives a good status description of our current knowledge of how different designs and operational conditions affect environmental factors that influence microbial densities, community composition and activities. The editorial paper highlights results from those papers, where the authors have linked process studies with biochemical and gene-based investigations to achieve a mechanistic understanding of observed processes, and/or the biology of the communities responsible for those processes. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.