Abstract
Crop tree management (CTM) is a widely applicable silviculture technology that is used to improve the performance of individual trees. However, only little information is available about the effects of the CTM regime on the soil microbial community structure. We conducted a study to explore the effects of short-term (five years) CTM on the soil bacterial and fungal diversity, community composition, and structure in the 0–10 cm soil layer in a Larix gmelinii (Rupr.) Kuzen. plantation. We set out to investigate the differential response of bacterial and fungal communities to variations in soil properties mediated by short-term CTM. Compared with the control plots, the soil microbial biomass carbon and microbial biomass nitrogen in CTM increased significantly by 64.2% and 32.3%, respectively. CTM significantly promoted the content of soil organic carbon, dissolved organic carbon, and nitrate nitrogen, and reduced the content of dissolved organic nitrogen. CTM changed the Shannon and Simpson indices of soil fungi to a remarkable extent but had little effect on the α diversity of bacterial communities. The bacterial β diversity was more sensitive to CTM than fungi. The relative abundance of Verrucomicrobiae (the dominant class of soil bacteria) in CTM was significantly increased by 78.2%, while the relative abundance of Agaricomycetes (dominant class for soil fungi) was reduced by 43.3%. We observed a significantly increased number of unique OTUs for soil fungi in the CTM plots. Redundancy analysis showed that dissolved organic carbon, soil moisture, and total phosphorus content significantly affected the composition of bacterial communities, while soil dissolved organic nitrogen, C/N, and total phosphorus drove the high variation in fungal community composition. Overall, our results emphasize the divergent response of soil bacterial and fungal communities in Larix gmelinii plantations to short-term CTM. We must pay more attention to the functional role of soil microbiota in future forest management.
Highlights
The principle of forest sustainability is the most important principle in forest management, requiring forest managers to develop the forest in a direction close to nature [1,2].Forest thinning is one of the important and widely used silviculture methods, as it can ensure the survival rate and increase the growth rate and stand volume of trees [3]
In this study, based on advanced high-throughput technology, we focused on the effect of short-term crop tree management practices on soil bacterial and fungal diversity, community composition, and structure in a Larix gmelinii plantation
Compared with CK, the soil organic carbon (SOC), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), NO3 − -N, C/N, available phosphorus (AP), microbial biomass carbon (MBC), and MBN in Crop tree management (CTM) plots increased by 18.5%, 15.3%, 18.8%, 40.5%, 30.1%, 64.2%, and 32.3%, respectively (p < 0.05, Table 2)
Summary
The principle of forest sustainability is the most important principle in forest management, requiring forest managers to develop the forest in a direction close to nature [1,2]. Forest thinning is one of the important and widely used silviculture methods, as it can ensure the survival rate and increase the growth rate and stand volume of trees [3]. Crop tree management (CTM), based on an individual tree, is a special approach to forest thinning that improves the quality of the individual tree by eliminating the interference of tree competition and increasing the space for crop tree growth [4,5]. It is considered to be a critical approach in achieving close-to-nature forest management [6,7].
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