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Assessing Soil Microbial Community Composition Across Landscapes: Do Surface Soils Reveal Patterns?
Author(s) -
Allison Victoria J.,
Yermakov Zhanna,
Miller R. Michael,
Jastrow Julie D.,
Matamala Roser
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
soil science society of america journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1435-0661
pISSN - 0361-5995
DOI - 10.2136/sssaj2006.0301n
Subject(s) - soil water , environmental science , soil science , biomass (ecology) , microbial population biology , ecology , geology , biology , paleontology , bacteria
Soil microbial community composition changes with both position in the landscape and depth in the soil column. Depth patterns may be stronger than landscape patterns, and thus landscape‐level patterns determined from surface soils may not be representative of the soil column as a whole. We asked whether patterns determined from surface soils and the integrated soil column reveal the same landscape‐level patterns, predicting that because of the preponderance of biomass in surface soil, biomass‐weighted patterns in an integrated soil column will be the same as in the surface soil. We found that community composition in surface soils and in an integrated soil column revealed the same pattern of change with time, and were very highly positively correlated. We suggest that in systems where resource inputs, and thus microbial biomass, declines strongly with depth, changes in composition of microbial communities across the landscape can be adequately determined from surface soils.