Dataset Information

Effects of Short-Term Warming and Altered Precipitation on Soil Microbial Communities in Alpine Grassland of the Tibetan Plateau.

ABSTRACT: Soil microbial communities are influenced by climate change drivers such as warming and altered precipitation. These changes create abiotic stresses, including desiccation and nutrient limitation, which act on microbes. However, our understanding of the responses of microbial communities to co-occurring climate change drivers is limited. We surveyed soil bacterial and fungal diversity and composition after a 1-year warming and altered precipitation manipulation in the Tibetan plateau alpine grassland. In isolation, warming and decreased precipitation treatments each had no significant effects on soil bacterial community structure; however, in combination of both treatments altered bacterial community structure (p = 0.03). The main effect of altered precipitation specifically impacted the relative abundances of Bacteroidetes and Gammaproteobacteria compared to the control, while the main effect of warming impacted the relative abundance of Betaproteobacteria. In contrast, the fungal community had no significant response to the treatments after 1-year. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we found bacterial community composition was positively related to soil moisture. Our results indicate that short-term climate change could cause changes in soil bacterial community through taxonomic shifts. Our work provides new insights into immediate soil microbial responses to short-term stressors acting on an ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to global climate change.

SUBMITTER: Zhang K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4927576 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of Short-Term Warming and Altered Precipitation on Soil Microbial Communities in Alpine Grassland of the Tibetan Plateau.

Zhang Kaoping K Shi Yu Y Jing Xin X He Jin-Sheng JS Sun Ruibo R Yang Yunfeng Y Shade Ashley A Chu Haiyan H

Frontiers in microbiology 20160630

Soil microbial communities are influenced by climate change drivers such as warming and altered precipitation. These changes create abiotic stresses, including desiccation and nutrient limitation, which act on microbes. However, our understanding of the responses of microbial communities to co-occurring climate change drivers is limited. We surveyed soil bacterial and fungal diversity and composition after a 1-year warming and altered precipitation manipulation in the Tibetan plateau alpine gras ...[more]

PMID: 27446064

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Project description:BackgroundThe degradation of alpine meadows has induced substantial losses of soil organic carbon (SOC) on the Tibetan Plateau. A commonly-used method for rehabilitating degraded alpine meadows in this region is establishing cultivated grasslands through sowing seed mixtures, but its impact on the biochemical stability of SOC has remained inadequately explored.MethodsIn this study, a total of 20 composited 0-20 cm soil samples were collected from a heavily degraded alpine meadow (DM) and three adjacent cultivated grasslands established for 3 years (CG3), 12 years (CG12), and 17 years (CG17) on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, and the SOC pool was separated into labile C pool I (LOC I), labile C pool II (LOC II), and recalcitrant C pool (ROC) in order to investigate changes in contents of SOC fractions that have different biochemical stabilities after the establishment of cultivated grassland.ResultsAlthough the establishment of cultivated grasslands led to increases in soil total organic C content, the increase was only significant in samples with 17 years of cultivation. We found that the contents of the three SOC fractions were higher at CG3 and CG12 compared with those in the DM, and the differences were only significant for soil LOC II. By comparison, 17 years of cultivation led to significant increases in all of the SOC fraction contents. The results implied that different cultivation years had distinct impacts on SOC fractions in cultivated grasslands, and longer cultivation years contributed to accumulated soil ROC. The recalcitrance index of SOC in the DM was higher than that at CG3 and CG12, but lower than that at CG17. This was possibly due to the generally low litter quality of cultivated grasslands, which led to a slow release of complex compounds to soils. Moreover, it was observed that soil C:N ratio was a potential indicator of SOC biochemical stability because of their close correlation.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the long-term establishment of cultivated grasslands on DM is a promising solution to recovering both the quantity and stability of SOC on the Tibetan Plateau.

Project description:A change in precipitation can profoundly change the structure of soil microbial communities, especially in arid and semi-arid areas which are limited by moisture conditions. Therefore, it is crucial to explore how soil bacterial community composition and diversity will respond to variation in precipitation. Here we conducted a precipitation control experiment to simulate precipitation change by reducing and increasing rainfall by 25%, 50%, and 75% in the alpine grasslands of northern Tibet. The composition, diversity, and species interaction network of soil microbial community were studied by high-throughput sequencing, and the relationship between microbial community species and soil environmental factors was analyzed. Our results showed that Proteobacteria (45%-52%) and Actinobacteria (37%-45%) were the dominant bacteria in the soil. The alpha diversity index based on Shannon, Chao1, and Simpson indices revealed that precipitation change had no significant effect on richness and evenness of soil microbial communities. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) showed that a clear separation of soil microbial communities between D2(-50%),D3(-75%) and W2(+50%), W3(+75%) treatments. The microbial interaction network indicated that the water-increasing treatment group had closer connections, and Proteobacteria and Actinomycetes were the core species. Furthermore, there was a stronger positive correlation between species in the water-reducing treatment group, the contribution of Proteobacteria decreased significantly, the role of connecting hub decreased, and Actinomycetes became the most important core microbial species. In addition, soil water content (SWC) and available phosphorus (AP) were closely related to the variations in soil microbial compositions. The findings of this study provide a theoretical basis for the driving mechanism of global climate change on soil microbial community and grassland ecosystem in alpine grassland.

Dataset Information

Effects of Short-Term Warming and Altered Precipitation on Soil Microbial Communities in Alpine Grassland of the Tibetan Plateau.

Publications

Effects of Short-Term Warming and Altered Precipitation on Soil Microbial Communities in Alpine Grassland of the Tibetan Plateau.

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