Marine organisms are known to play important roles in transforming nutrients in sediments, however, guidelines
to optimize sediment restoration are not available. We conducted a laboratory mesocosm experiment to investigate
the role of hard clams, polychaetes, the degree of physical disturbance and denitrifying bacterial concentrations
in removing total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), and total organic carbon (TOC) in marine
sediments. Response surface methodology was employed to analyze the results of initial experiments and in a
subsequent experiment identified optimal combinations of parameters. Balancing the TN, TP, TOC removal effi-
ciency, our model predicted 39% TN removal, 33% TP removal, and 42% TOC removal for a 14-day laboratory bioremediation
trial using hard clams biomass of 1.2 kg m−2
, physical disturbance depth of 16.4 cm, bacterial
density of 0.18 L m−2
, and polychaetes biomass of 0.16 kg m−2
, respectively. These results emphasize the
value of combining different species in field-based bioremediation.
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