Interactive effects of elevation and land use on soil bacterial communities in the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau of China is uniquely vulnerable to the global climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. As soil bacteria exert a considerable influence on the ecosystem function, understanding their response to different climates and land-use types is important. Here, we characterized the bacterial community composition and diversity across three major ecosystems (cropland, forest, and grassland) in the Sygera Mountains of Tibet, along a typical elevational gradient (3 300–4 600 m). The abundance of taxa that preferentially inhabit neutral or weak alkaline soil environments (such as Actinobacteria, Thermoleophilia, and some non-acidophilus Acidobacteria) was significantly greater in the cropland than in the forest and grassland. Furthermore, the diversity of soil bacterial communities was also significantly greater in the cropland than in the forest and grassland. We observed a unimodal distribution of bacterial species diversity along the elevation gradient. The dominant phyla Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria exhibited consistent elevational distribution patterns that mirrored the abundance of their most abundant classes, while different patterns were observed for Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria at the class level. Soil pH was the primary edaphic property that regulated bacterial community composition across the different land-use types. Additionally, soil pH was the main factor distinguishing bacterial communities in managed soils (i.e., cropland) from the communities in the natural environments (i.e., forest and grassland). In conclusion, land use (particularly anthropogenic disturbances such as cropping) largely controlled soil environment, played a major role in driving bacterial community composition and distribution, and also surpassed climate in affecting bacterial community distribution.