Journal
MICROBIAL ECOLOGY
Volume 75, Issue 4, Pages 1009-1023Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00248-017-1098-4
Keywords
Climate change; Warming and wetting; Bacterial 16S rRNA; Nitrification; Denitrification; Alpine grassland
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation of China [41230857]
- Ministry of Science and Technology of China [2013CB956300]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Climate change is projected to have impacts on precipitation and temperature regimes in drylands of high elevation regions, with especially large effects in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. However, there was limited information about how the projected climate change will impact on the soil microbial community and their activity in the region. Here, we present results from a study conducted across 72 soil samples from 24 different sites along a temperature and precipitation gradient (substituted by aridity index ranging from 0.079 to 0.89) of the Plateau, to assess how changes in aridity affect the abundance, community composition, and diversity of bacteria, ammonia-oxidizers, and denitrifers (nirK/S and nosZ genes-containing communities) as well as nitrogen (N) turnover enzyme activities. We found V-shaped or inverted V-shaped relationships between the aridity index (AI) and soil microbial parameters (gene abundance, community structures, microbial diversity, and N turnover enzyme activities) with a threshold at AI = 0.27. The increasing or decreasing rates of the microbial parameters were higher in areas with AI < 0.27 (alpine steppes) than in mesic areas with 0.27 < AI < 0.89 (alpine meadow and swamp meadow). The results indicated that the projected warming and wetting have a strong impact on soil microbial communities in the alpine steppes.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available