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Variations of soil bacterial community and denitrifier abundance with depth under different land-use types

  • Soils, Sec 5 • Soil and Landscape Ecology • Research Article
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Long-term excessive application of nitrogen fertilizer under diverse land uses has caused serious environmental problems on the North China Plain. Current studies focus on denitrifiers and bacterial communities in topsoil under diverse land-use types; however, few studies have studied denitrifiers and microbial communities in subsoils.

Materials and methods

The variations in soil bacterial communities and denitrifiers with soil profiles (0–300 cm) under crop, apple orchard, and vegetable fields were investigated through high-throughput sequencing and quantitative PCR technologies.

Results and discussion

NO3-N largely accumulated in the deeper soil layers (100–300 cm) in the apple orchard, resulting in a higher risk of NO3-N leaching. The soil bacterial community structure at the 0–100 cm soil depth had a marketable difference from that at 100–300 cm under these three land-use types, and the C:N ratio was the main driving factor for their vertical distribution. The bacterial α-diversity decreased with soil depth; the crop field had the highest α-diversity across all horizons except 100–200 cm, and total carbon was the most important factor driving α-diversity. In addition, the absolute abundance of the nirK, nirS, and nosZ genes decreased with soil depth and varied with land-use type, which was deeply affected by multiple soil properties, such as soil organic matter and total nitrogen.

Conclusion

Our findings highlighted that potentially important and unique functions remain to be revealed in subsoils, which may provide new insights into mitigating nitrate leaching in various land-use types.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41930865, No. 42077358, No. 41877425) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDB40020204).

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Correspondence to Fenghua Wang.

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Han, W., Wang, F., Zhang, L. et al. Variations of soil bacterial community and denitrifier abundance with depth under different land-use types. J Soils Sediments 23, 1889–1900 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03428-8

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