Abstract
One of the aims of sustainable forest management is to preserve the diversity and resilience of ecosystems. Unfortunately, changes in the soil microbial communities after forest management remain unclear. We analyzed and compared the soil microbial community of a natural Quercus aliena var. acuteserrata forest after four years of four different management methods using high-throughput sequencing technology. The forest management methods were close-to-nature management (CNFM), structure-based forest management (SBFM), secondary forest comprehensive silviculture (SFCS) and unmanaged control (CK). The results showed that: (1) the soil microbial community diversity indices were not significantly different among the different management methods. (2) The relative abundance of Proteobacteria in the SBFM treatment was lower than in the CK treatment, while the relative abundance of Acidobacteria in the SBFM was significantly higher than that in the CK treatment. The relative abundance of Ascomycota was highest in the CNFM treatment, and that of Basidiomycota was lowest in the CNFM treatment. However, the relative abundance of dominant bacterial and fungal phyla was not significantly different in CK and SFCS. (3) Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that the soil organic matter (SOM), total nitrogen (TN), and available nitrogen (AN) significantly correlated with the bacterial communities, and the available potassium (AK) was the only soil nutrient, which significantly correlated with the composition of the fungal communities. The short-term SBFM treatment altered microbial bacterial community compositions, which may be attributed to the phyla present (e.g., Proteobacteria and Acidobacteria), and the short-term CNFM treatment altered microbial fungal community compositions, which may be attributed to the phyla present (e.g., Ascomycota and Basidiomycota). Furthermore, soil nutrients could affect the dominant soil microbial communities, and its influence was greater on the bacterial community than on the fungal community.
Highlights
The soil microbial community is a vital component of the soil biological system
Our study showed that the relative abundance of Ascomycota was significantly higher in the close-to-nature forest management (CNFM) treatment compared with that in the CK treatment and others treatments (Table S3, Supplementary Materials), while the relative abundance of Basidiomycota was significantly lower in the CNFM treatment compared with those in the CK treatment and CNFM treatment (Table S3, Supplementary Materials), in agreement with the study of Hartmann et al [53], who showed that harvesting had effects on the fungal communities, namely, the abundance of Ascomycota was increased, and that of Basidiomycota was decreased in harvested stands
The purpose of this research was to understand the effect of different forest management methods on soil nutrients and microbial communities
Summary
The soil microbial community is a vital component of the soil biological system. It plays important roles in the nutrient cycles and energy flows, providing essential services to the forest ecosystem [1,2,3,4].Bacteria and fungi are present in high proportions in soil microbial communities [5]. The soil microbial community is a vital component of the soil biological system. It plays important roles in the nutrient cycles and energy flows, providing essential services to the forest ecosystem [1,2,3,4]. Bacteria generally utilize the available substrates decomposed by fungi. It can facilitate fungal degraders by providing electrons or essential micronutrients [9,10]. In forest soils, microbial communities are affected by the changes in aboveground vegetation communities and soil environmental properties (such as nutrients, temperature, and moisture) influenced by human activity through forest management [11,12]
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