Impact of climate warming on soil microbial communities during the restoration of the inner Mongolian desert steppe

作者：Jirong Qiao, Jiahua Zheng, Shaoyu Li, Feng Zhang, Bin Zhang, Mengli Zhao · 发表于：Frontiers in Microbiology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.3389/fmicb.2024.1458777 · 被引用次数：8 · 研究领域：Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics、Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology、Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology

Introduction: Grazer exclosure is widely regarded as an effective measure for restoring degraded grasslands, having positive effects on soil microbial diversity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that global surface temperatures will increase by 1.5-4.5°C by the end of the 21st century, which may affect restoration practices for degraded grasslands. This inevitability highlights the urgent need to study the effect of temperature on grassland soil microbial communities, given their critical ecological functions. Methods: Here, we assessed the effects of heavy grazing (control), grazer exclosure, and grazer exclosure plus warming by 1.5°C on soil microbial community diversity and network properties as well as their relationships to soil physicochemical properties. Results and discussion: Our results showed that grazer closure increased soil microbial richness relative to heavy grazing controls. Specifically, bacterial richness increased by 7.9%, fungal richness increased by 20.2%, and the number of fungal network nodes and edges increased without altering network complexity and stability. By contrast, grazer exclosure plus warming decreased bacterial richness by 9.2% and network complexity by 12.4% compared to heavy grazing controls, while increasing fungal network complexity by 25.8%. Grazer exclosure without warming increased soil ammonium nitrogen content, while warming increased soil nitrate nitrogen content. Soil pH and organic carbon were not a...