Extractable nitrogen and microbial community structure respond to grassland restoration regardless of historical context and soil composition

Dickens, Sara Jo M.; Allen, Edith B.; Santiago, Louis S.; Crowley, David E.

doi:10.1093/aobpla/plu085

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Whether and how soil microbial communities recover following human land use and active restoration efforts remains an open question (Harris, 2009) and our study adds to accumulating evidence that restoration actions manipulating ecosystem structure and plant diversity (directly or indirectly) also affect soil microbial communities (Banning et al, 2011;Barber et al, 2017;Dickens, Allen, Santiago, & Crowley, 2015;Potthoff et al, 2006). We further illustrate the potential for restoration to benefit soil microbes across sites supporting different land-use histories.…”

Section: Implications For Managementmentioning

confidence: 67%

Agricultural land‐use history and restoration impact soil microbial biodiversity

Turley

Bell‐Dereske

Evans

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. Human land uses, such as agriculture, can leave long-lasting legacies as ecosystems recover. As a consequence, active restoration may be necessary to overcome landuse legacies; however, few studies have evaluated the joint effects of agricultural history and restoration on ecological communities. Those that have studied this joint effect have largely focused on plants and ignored other communities, such as soil microbes. 2. We conducted a large-scale experiment to understand how agricultural history and restoration tree thinning affect soil bacterial and fungal communities within longleaf pine savannas of the southern United States. This experiment contained 64 pairs of remnant (no history of tillage agriculture) and post-agricultural (reforested following abandonment from tillage agriculture >60 years prior) longleaf pine savanna plots. Plots were each 1 ha and arranged into 27 blocks to minimize land-use decision-making biases. We experimentally restored half of the remnant and post-agricultural plots by thinning trees to reinstate open-canopy savanna conditions and collected soils from all plots five growing seasons after tree thinning. We then evaluated soil bacterial and fungal communities using metabarcoding. 3. Agricultural history increased bacterial diversity but decreased fungal diversity, while restoration increased both bacterial and fungal diversity. Both bacterial and fungal richness were correlated with a range of environmental variables including above-ground variables like leaf litter and plant diversity, and below-ground variables such as soil nutrients, pH and organic matter, many of which were also impacted by agricultural history and restoration. 4. Fungal and bacterial community compositions were shaped by restoration and agricultural history resulting in four distinct communities across the four treatment combinations. 5. Synthesis and applications. Past agricultural land use has left persistent legacies on soil microbial biodiversity, even over half a century after agricultural abandonment and after intensive restoration activities. The impacts of these changes on soil microbe biodiversity could influence native plant establishment, plant productivity and other aspects of ecosystem functioning following agricultural abandonment and during restoration.

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Section: Implications For Managementmentioning

confidence: 67%

Agricultural land‐use history and restoration impact soil microbial biodiversity

Turley

Bell‐Dereske

Evans

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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“…Any significant differences in the abundance of AOB, nitrogen turnover rates, or the levels of soil microbial biomass carbon can be directly attributed to changes in stand volume over time, and not solely differences in soil moisture content (Zak et al ; Dickens et al ). Wood accumulation rates slowed within the maturing pine patches as trees shifted from height growth and radial increment to only slow radial accumulations (Oliver & Larson ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil nitrogen dynamics as an indicator for longleaf pine restoration

McCaskill

Jose

Chauhan

et al. 2017

Restoration Ecology

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Assessing the status of soil nutrients with their corresponding microbial communities provides important information about degraded soils during the restoration of coastal wet pine forests. Net nitrogen mineralization, nitrogen-oxidizing bacteria (NOB), and soil microbial biomass were compared with patch-derived volume along a 110-year longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) chronosequence for identifying a trajectory and ecological benchmark during forest restoration. Net nitrogen mineralization rates decreased significantly in the maturing-aged, pine patches, driven by a larger drop in net nitrification. Net nitrification and abundance of NOB were higher in young pine patches compared to soils from the maturing (86-110 years) pine patches. Gross nitrate fluxes followed the nonfungal portion of the soil microbial biomass along the chronosequence, declining in 64-year-old pine patches. Microbial biomass peaked in patches 17-34 years of age, but significantly declined in the older patches. Fungal biomass leveled off without decline. Ammonium was the major source of nitrogen within the maturing pine patches as well as the wetland patches, indicating that ammonium maintains longleaf pine during growth-limiting conditions. Nitrate dominated during rapid tree growth, optimally in mesic conditions. The relative amounts of available ammonium to nitrate can be used to model nitrogen cycling in facultative-wetland pine forests of the coastal United States as soils alternate between wet and mesic conditions. A key restoration benchmark occurred after 86 years of pine development when pine patch growth rates slowed, with lower numbers of NOB, when the nonfungal biomass leveled off, and net nitrification rates are at a minimum, during pine maturation.

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“…Illuminating the spatial patterns of microorganisms in a grassland ecosystem not only helps to predict the critical processes that occur within grasslands (e.g. grassland degradation and restoration) but also helps to build a more comprehensive microbial biogeographic pattern at a larger scale 9,10 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat filtering shapes the differential structure of microbial communities in the Xilingol grassland

Yang

Wang

Cui

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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The spatial variability of microorganisms in grasslands can provide important insights regarding the biogeographic patterns of microbial communities. However, information regarding the degree of overlap and partitions of microbial communities across different habitats in grasslands is limited. This study investigated the microbial communities in three distinct habitats from Xilingol steppe grassland, i.e. animal excrement, phyllosphere, and soil samples, by Illumina MiSeq sequencing. All microbial community structures, i.e. for bacteria, archaea, and fungi, were significantly distinguished according to habitat. A high number of unique microorganisms but few coexisting microorganisms were detected, suggesting that the structure of microbial communities was mainly regulated by species selection and niche differentiation. However, the sequences of those limited coexisting microorganisms among the three different habitats accounted for over 60% of the total sequences, indicating their ability to adapt to variable environments. In addition, the biotic interactions among microorganisms based on a co-occurrence network analysis highlighted the importance of Microvirga, Blastococcus, RB41, Nitrospira, and four norank members of bacteria in connecting the different microbiomes. Collectively, the microbial communities in the Xilingol steppe grassland presented strong habitat preferences with a certain degree of dispersal and colonization potential to new habitats along the animal excrement- phyllosphere-soil gradient. This study provides the first detailed comparison of microbial communities in different habitats in a single grassland, and offers new insights into the biogeographic patterns of the microbial assemblages in grasslands.

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Extractable nitrogen and microbial community structure respond to grassland restoration regardless of historical context and soil composition

Cited by 13 publications

References 52 publications

Agricultural land‐use history and restoration impact soil microbial biodiversity

Agricultural land‐use history and restoration impact soil microbial biodiversity

Soil nitrogen dynamics as an indicator for longleaf pine restoration

Habitat filtering shapes the differential structure of microbial communities in the Xilingol grassland

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