We investigated changes in bacterial communities of the sediment in a large, shallow, eutrophic, freshwater Lake Taihu, China, during typhoon Morakot (August 7 to 13, 2009). Based on cluster analysis of the DGGE banding patterns, bacterial communities in different sediment samples were very similar to each other. However, samples from the middle period of the typhoon were different from those of the early and late periods of the typhoon. Two bacterial groups, Bacteroidetes and Nitrospirae, rapidly appeared or increased in the sediment samples of the middle period of the typhoon, due to the strong turbulence in the water column caused by typhoon resulted in the exchange of surface sediment with a high level of organic matter with the water column, and severe disturbance to the anaerobic layer of the sediments. Redundancy analysis showed that organic matter contributed significantly to the changes in sediment bacterial communities during the typhoon. Our study demonstrated that the response of sediment bacterial communities to the typhoon event was very rapid but of short duration.
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