Changes of soil microbial community structure under the intensity of urbanization

Abstract:

Soil bacteria provide a large range of ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling. Despite their important role in soil systems,However, their community dynamics due to environmental changes caused by urban development have not been fully understood.Here, we assessed soil bacterial communities in 60 sample soil bacterial communities in Zhuzhutan city agglomeration of Hunan Province were identified by high-throughput sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA gene.The soil microbial communities in urban and suburban woodlands were compared.We found that the dominant phyla of all the samples are Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria,Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Proteobacteria and Verrucomicrobia.The diversity of urban soil bacterial community is higher than that of suburb.Soil pH was the best predictor for bacterial community structure, diversity and function.Variance partitioning analysis showed that edaphic properties contributed to 17.81% of the bacterial community variation, heavy metal pollution explained 12.34% of the variation,the explanation rate of the urban impervious surface value of this variation is 1.92%. Together, our data indicate that urban development can change the composition and diversity of soil bacterial communities. Soil carbon and soil pH are key factors affecting the composition of soil bacterial communities. Urban development has a strong influence on soil bacterial communities.