Soil Microbial Community Successional Patterns during Forest Ecosystem Restoration

Abstract

Soil microbial community characterization is increasingly being used to determine the responses of soils to stress and disturbances and to assess ecosystem sustainability. However, there is little experimental evidence to indicate that predictable patterns in microbial community structure or composition occur during secondary succession or ecosystem restoration. This study utilized a chronosequence of developing jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest ecosystems, rehabilitated after bauxite mining (up to 18 years old), to examine changes in soil bacterial and fungal community structures (by automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis [ARISA]) and changes in specific soil bacterial phyla by 16S rRNA gene microarray analysis. This study demonstrated that mining in these ecosystems significantly altered soil bacterial and fungal community structures. The hypothesis that the soil microbial community structures would become more similar to those of the surrounding nonmined forest with rehabilitation age was broadly supported by shifts in the bacterial but not the fungal community. Microarray analysis enabled the identification of clear successional trends in the bacterial community at the phylum level and supported the finding of an increase in similarity to nonmined forest soil with rehabilitation age. Changes in soil microbial community structure were significantly related to the size of the microbial biomass as well as numerous edaphic variables (including pH and C, N, and P nutrient concentrations). These findings suggest that soil bacterial community dynamics follow a pattern in developing ecosystems that may be predictable and can be conceptualized as providing an integrated assessment of numerous edaphic variables.

The Effects of Various Land Reclamation Scenarios on the Succession of Soil Bacteria, Archaea, and Fungi Over the Short and Long Term

“…In a dry environment, microbial succession may lag behind plant succession, but plant and microbes demonstrate a similar succession pattern (Lozano et al, 2014). Previous studies reported that bacteria and fungi evolved along different trajectories under various conditions, such as secondary succession in a restored ecosystem (Banning et al, 2011;Li et al, 2013a), shrub encroachment (Yannarell et al, 2014), and the primary succession of lava flows (Cutler et al, 2014) and glacier soils (Brown and Jumpponen, 2014). The different succession patterns were determined by the range of microbial physiologies, dispersal ability, and assembly pattern .…”

“…Banning et al (2011) showed that the bacterial community successional trend became more similar to those of the surrounding non-mined forest with increased rehabilitation age, but fungi did not show a similar successional trajectory. Yannarell et al (2014) found that both bacterial and fungal communities demonstrated significant variation along transects spanning the prairie-shrub-forest continuum, but their predominant patterns were different.…”

Texture and geochemistry of surface horizons of Arctic soils from a non-glaciated catchment, SW Spitsbergen

“…Furthermore, the quantity, quality, community structure, and activity of soil microorganisms and soil fauna, which occur mainly in the upper part of the soil profile, also depend on soil physical and chemical properties (Moorhead et al 2003;Carson et al 2007;Rousk et al 2010;Banning et al 2011;Świtoniak et al 2014). Surface soil horizons are also characterized by the highest content of soil organic carbon and nitrogen and the concentration of organic carbon and nitrogen in soils is highly related to other soil physical and chemical parameters such as texture (mainly clay fraction content), mineral composition (mainly quantity and quality of clay minerals), moisture, pH, and the content of common and less common chemical elements (Schimel et al 1994;Balesdent et al 2000;Sjögersten et al 2006;Xu et al 2016;Szymański et al 2016).…”

Soil microbial community structure and function responses to successive planting of Eucalyptus

“…Soil microbial communities may provide early indication of soil changes (Harris, 2009;Banning et al, 2011), and are increasingly used to assess ecosystem responses * Corresponding author. E-mail: zhenghua@rcees.ac.cn to environmental perturbations (Harris, 2003;van Dijk et al, 2009;Lewis et al, 2010;Banning et al, 2011) because of its rapid response to anthropogenic disturbances relative to soil biogeochemical properties.…”

“…E-mail: zhenghua@rcees.ac.cn to environmental perturbations (Harris, 2003;van Dijk et al, 2009;Lewis et al, 2010;Banning et al, 2011) because of its rapid response to anthropogenic disturbances relative to soil biogeochemical properties. These responses have been assessed using soil biological indicators such as the phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) profiles to reflect the structure of the soil microbial community (Iovieno et al, 2010), and soil enzyme activities to reflect their functional capacity (Rivas et al, 2009).…”