Variation in the Soil Prokaryotic Community Under Simulated Warming and Rainfall Reduction in Different Water Table Peatlands of the Zoige Plateau.

Wei Li,Yixin He,Gang Yang,Junpeng Rui,Huai Chen,Ning Wu,Zhiying Yan

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.00343

Abstract

Climate change and water table drawdown impact the community structure and diversity of peatland soil prokaryotes. Nonetheless, how soil prokaryotes of different water tables respond to climate change remains largely unknown. This study used 16S rRNA gene sequencing to evaluate the variation in soil prokaryotes under scenarios of warming, rainfall reduction, and their combination in different water table peatlands on the Zoige Plateau in China. Stimulated climate change affected some of the diversity indexes and relative abundances of soil prokaryotes in three water table peatlands. Additionally, those from the dry-rewetting event peatland had the most dominant phyla (genera) that showed significant changes in a relative abundance due to the simulated climate change treatments. Regarding functional microbial groups of carbon and nitrogen cycling, simulated climate change did not affect the abundances of the Euryarchaeota, Proteobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and Methanobacterium in three water table peatlands, except NC10 and Nitrospirae. Redundancy analysis showed that the prokaryotic community variation was primary impacted by site properties of the different water table peatlands rather than the simulated climate change treatments. Moreover, the water table, total carbon, total nitrogen, and soil pH were the primary factors for the overall variation in the soil prokaryotic structure. This study provides a theoretical guidance for management strategies in the Zoige peatland, under climate change scenarios. More attention should be given to the interactive effects of peatland water table drawdown and simulated climate changes for better restorative efforts in water table drawdown, rather than simply adapting to climate change.

Highlights

Warming and fluctuations in rainfall patterns are common aspects of global climate change around the world, especially in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (Liu and Chen, 2000; Yao et al, 2000), which is becoming warmer (Liang et al, 2009; Chen et al, 2013) and slightly drier (Yang et al, 2014)
This research aimed to (1) verify whether simulated climate change affects prokaryotic communities and (2) explore whether the response of soil prokaryotes to simulated climate change was consistent among different water table peatlands
We found significant differences in soil properties among three water table peatlands, and the simulated climate change treatments just significantly affected some indexes of the soil properties (Supplementary Table S1)

Summary

Introduction

Warming and fluctuations in rainfall patterns are common aspects of global climate change around the world, especially in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (Liu and Chen, 2000; Yao et al, 2000), which is becoming warmer (Liang et al, 2009; Chen et al, 2013) and slightly drier (Yang et al, 2014). In the eastern QinghaiTibetan Plateau, the Zoige peatland faces water table drawdown and degradation due to climate change, overgrazing, and land reclamation for livestock (Wang et al, 2011; Guo et al, 2013). The combined effects of peatland degradation and climate change are likely to have a significant impact on soil conditions (Shang et al, 2013). It is important to understand how climate change and peatland water table drawdown affects the structure and biogeochemical cycling of soil microbial communities, which will help predicate future management strategies

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