Abstract
Changes in soil bacterial communities, which are crucial for the assessment of ecological restoration in Chinese plantations, have never been studied in the “Three North Shelterbelt” project in the semi-arid areas. We used high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rDNA gene to investigate the soil bacterial community diversity, structure, and functional characteristics in three plantation forests, including Populus × canadensis Moench (PC), Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica (PS), and Pinus tabuliformis (PT). In addition, soil environment factors were measured. There were distinct differences in soil characteristics among different plantation forests. Compared to PS and PT, PC had a higher soil pH, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and available P, as well as a lower C/N ratio. Furthermore, afforestation with different tree species significantly altered the abundance of Proteobacteria, and Chloroflexi in the soil, and its influence on the bacterial diversity indices. The bacterial community compositions and functional groups related to C and N cycling from PS, and PT were grouped tightly, indicating that the soil bacterial phylogenetic distance of PS and PT were closer than that between PS plus PT and PC. Our results implied that the soil characteristics, as well as the diversity, compositions and functions related to C and N cycling of soil bacterial community obviously differed from the following afforestation, especially between PC and PS plus PT, which in turn enormously established the correlation between the soil microbial community characteristics and the afforestation tree species.
Highlights
Desertification has always been an important global ecological environmental problem in the arid and semi-arid regions (Li et al, 2004; Torres et al, 2015; Becerril-Piña et al, 2015), that is mainly caused by climate change and human activities in arid, semi-arid and some sub-humid regions (Chasek et al, 2015; Salvati et al, 2015; Wijitkosum, 2016), impacting 25% of the total terrestrial area (Reynolds et al, 2007; Allington & Valone, 2010)
We propose the following hypotheses: (1) the three different plantation forests harbor different soil bacterial diversity and community structures; (2) the functional groups related to C and N cycling differ between Populus × canadensis Moench (PC) and Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica (PS) plus Pinus tabuliformis (PT); and (3) consistent differences occur in the soil bacterial community and functional characteristics following afforestation
Our results revealed that soil characteristics after afforestation with different tree species under the same climatic conditions showed dramatic differences, especially between Populus × canadensis Moench and Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica and Pinus tabuliformis
Summary
Desertification has always been an important global ecological environmental problem in the arid and semi-arid regions (Li et al, 2004; Torres et al, 2015; Becerril-Piña et al, 2015), that is mainly caused by climate change and human activities in arid, semi-arid and some sub-humid regions (Chasek et al, 2015; Salvati et al, 2015; Wijitkosum, 2016), impacting 25% of the total terrestrial area (Reynolds et al, 2007; Allington & Valone, 2010). Desertification has caused a loss of soil nutrients, a decline in land productivity and. This leads to a decline or degradation in sand-stabilization, soil conservation, water resource regulation, carbon sequestration and other desert ecosystem services, and it endangers both regional and national economic, social, and environmental security (Martã-Nez-Valderrama et al, 2016; Sutton et al, 2016). Research sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) shows that the global economic losses caused by desertification and drought are as high as $4. China is confronted with various environmental problems, including sandstorms, severe desertification, and land degradation in dry northern regions (Liu & Diamond, 2005)
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