Abstract
To better understand the relationship between soil bacterial communities, soil physicochemical properties, land use and geographical distance, we considered for the first time ever a European transect running from Sweden down to Portugal and from France to Slovenia. We investigated 71 sites based on their range of variation in soil properties (pH, texture and organic matter), climatic conditions (Atlantic, alpine, boreal, continental, Mediterranean) and land uses (arable, forest and grassland). 16S rRNA gene amplicon pyrosequencing revealed that bacterial communities highly varied in diversity, richness, and structure according to environmental factors. At the European scale, taxa area relationship (TAR) was significant, supporting spatial structuration of bacterial communities. Spatial variations in community diversity and structure were mainly driven by soil physicochemical parameters. Within soil clusters (k-means approach) corresponding to similar edaphic and climatic properties, but to multiple land uses, land use was a major driver of the bacterial communities. Our analyses identified specific indicators of land use (arable, forest, grasslands) or soil conditions (pH, organic C, texture). These findings provide unprecedented information on soil bacterial communities at the European scale and on the drivers involved; possible applications for sustainable soil management are discussed.
Highlights
Monitoring soil microbial communities represents a major challenge to better valorize soil resources and to implement a more sustainable management of soils in agriculture and forestry[1,2]
Studies on the effect of land use or soil properties on bacterial communities had already been performed at a continental scale[7,9,15], but our study characterises bacterial communities at the European scale for the first time[28]
We analysed the effect of soil properties and land use on the soil bacterial communities using an unprecedented extensive European transect allowing us to sample soils representative of a range of soil properties from different geographical and climatic zones across Europe
Summary
Monitoring soil microbial communities represents a major challenge to better valorize soil resources and to implement a more sustainable management of soils in agriculture and forestry[1,2]. Forests are usually developed on nutrient-poor soils, which vary from very acidic to neutral pH values This study addresses these shortcomings by determining the relative effects of land use and soil properties on bacterial diversity and structure in a large number of soil samples collected and characterised across the first European transect for soil microbes. The sampled sites represented three major land uses (arable, forest, grassland) across a range of soils chosen for their contrasting pH values, textures, and organic matter contents, and covering a broad range of climatic conditions We analysed these soil samples for their physicochemical properties, and for their bacterial diversity and community composition by 16S rRNA gene amplicon pyrosequencing. We performed an indicator species analysis to identify the genera indicative of particular soil conditions and/or land uses
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