Erosion reduces soil microbial diversity, network complexity and multifunctionality

Liping Qiu,Peter B Reich,Baoyuan Liu,Samiran Banerjee,Huan Jiao,Mingan Shao,Xiaoxu Jia,Michael J Sadowsky,Satoshi Ishii,Haiqiang Li,Qian Zhang,Marcel G A Van Der Heijden,Xiaorong Wei,Hansong Zhu

doi:10.1038/s41396-021-00913-1

Abstract

While soil erosion drives land degradation, the impact of erosion on soil microbial communities and multiple soil functions remains unclear. This hinders our ability to assess the true impact of erosion on soil ecosystem services and our ability to restore eroded environments. Here we examined the effect of erosion on microbial communities at two sites with contrasting soil texture and climates. Eroded plots had lower microbial network complexity, fewer microbial taxa, and fewer associations among microbial taxa, relative to non-eroded plots. Soil erosion also shifted microbial community composition, with decreased relative abundances of dominant phyla such as Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Gemmatimonadetes. In contrast, erosion led to an increase in the relative abundances of some bacterial families involved in N cycling, such as Acetobacteraceae and Beijerinckiaceae. Changes in microbiota characteristics were strongly related with erosion-induced changes in soil multifunctionality. Together, these results demonstrate that soil erosion has a significant negative impact on soil microbial diversity and functionality.

Highlights

These authors contributed : Liping Qiu, Qian Zhang, Hansong Zhu
We demonstrated that soil erosion reduced soil multifunctionality and bacterial diversity as well as network complexity and associations among microbial taxa
Soil erosion caused significant changes in soil edaphic properties and reduced soil multifunctionality at both sites; the effects of erosion were greater at Nenjiang than at Fuxian (Table 1)

Summary

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Since a loss of keystone taxa can negatively affect network connectivity, identifying such taxa across erosion levels can yield insights into the impact of erosion, with subsequent implications for microbiome functioning and ecosystem multifunctionality. We evaluated the response of soil microbial community to erosion by examining how the diversity, composition and network complexity of soil microbiomes differ between non-eroded and eroded plots with varying erosion intensities. We quantified the diversity and composition of soil bacteria by using 16 S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing This date was used to construct co-occurrence networks to explore the associations among microbes and identified microbial keystone taxa. We linked these parameters to soil functions to test whether microbial community characteristics were related to soil quality and soil erosion. Changes in microbiota characteristics were positively related with erosion-induced changes in soil multifunctionality

Materials and methods

Results

Discussion

Compliance with ethical standards