Solar park promoted microbial nitrogen and phosphorus cycle potentials but reduced soil prokaryotic diversity and network stability in alpine desert ecosystem.

Abstract

Solar park (SP) is rapidly growing throughout the planet due to the increasing demand for low-carbon energy, which represents a remarkable global land-use change with implications for the hosting ecosystems. Despite dozens of studies estimating the environmental impacts of SP based on local microclimate and vegetation, responses of soil microbial interactions and nutrient cycle potentials remain poorly understood. To bridge this gap, we investigated the diversity, community structure, complexity, and stability of co-occurrence network and soil enzyme activities of soil prokaryotes and fungi in habitats of ambient, the first, and sixth year since solar park establishment. Results revealed different response patterns of prokaryotes and fungi. SP led to significant differences in both prokaryotic and fungal community structures but only reduced prokaryotic alpha diversity significantly. Co-occurrence network analysis revealed a unimodal pattern of prokaryotic network features and more resistance of fungal networks to environmental variations. Microbial nitrogen and phosphorus cycle potentials were higher in SP and their variances were more explained by network features than by diversity and environmental characteristics. Our findings revealed for the first time the significant impacts of SP on soil prokaryotic and fungal stability and functional potentials, which provides a microbial insight for impact evaluation and evidence for the optimization of solar park management to maximize the delivery of ecosystem services from this growing land use.