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Effect of agricultural land use change on community composition of bacteria and ammonia oxidizers

  • SOILS, SEC 5 • SOIL AND LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY • RESEARCH ARTICLE
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Soil microbial communities can be strongly influenced by agricultural practices, but little is known about bacterial community successions as land use changes. The objective of this study was to determine microbial community shifts following major land use changes in order to improve our understanding of land use impacts on microbial community composition and functions.

Materials and methods

Four agricultural land use patterns were selected for the study, including old rice paddy fields (ORP), Magnolia nursery planting (MNP), short-term vegetable (STV), and long-term vegetable (LTV) cultivation. All four systems are located in the same region with same soil parent material (alluvium), and the MNP, STV, and LTV systems had been converted from ORP for 10, 3, and 30 years, respectively. Soil bacteria and ammonia oxidizer community compositions were analyzed by 454 pyrosequencing and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, respectively. Quantitative PCR was used to determine 16S rRNA and amoA gene copy numbers.

Results and discussion

The results showed that when land use was changed from rice paddy to upland systems, the relative abundance of Chloroflexi increased whereas Acidobacteria decreased significantly. While LTV induced significant shifts of bacterial composition, MNP had the highest relative abundance of genera GP1, GP2, and GP3, which were mainly related to the development of soil acidity. The community composition of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) but not ammonia-oxidizing archaea was strongly impacted by the agricultural land use patterns, with LTV inducing the growth of a single super predominant AOB group. The land use changes also induced significant shifts in the abundance of 16S rRNA and bacterial amoA genes, but no significant differences in the abundance of archaea amoA was detected among the four land use patterns. Soil total phosphorous, available phosphorous, NO3 −, and soil organic carbon contents and pH were the main determinants in driving the composition of both bacteria and AOB communities.

Conclusions

These results clearly show the significant impact of land use change on soil microbial community composition and abundance and this will have major implications on the microbial ecology and nutrient cycling in these systems, some of which is unknown. Further research should be directed to studying the impacts of these microbial community shifts on nutrient dynamics in these agroecosystems so that improved nutrient management systems can be developed.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (41090282, 41071181) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KZCX2-YW-T07).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key laboratory of Agro-ecological Processes in Subtropical Regions and Taoyuan Agro-ecosystem Research Station, Soil Molecular Ecology Section, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, 410125, China

    Rong Sheng, Delong Meng, Minna Wu, Hongling Qin & Wenxue Wei

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, 100049, China

    Rong Sheng & Delong Meng

  3. Centre for Soil and Environmental Research, Lincoln University, Lincoln, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Hongjie Di

Authors
  1. Rong Sheng
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  2. Delong Meng
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  3. Minna Wu
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  4. Hongjie Di
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  5. Hongling Qin
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  6. Wenxue Wei
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Correspondence to Wenxue Wei.

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Responsible editor: Yanfen Wang

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ESM Fig. s1

Relative abundances of bacterial communities in soils derived from the different land use systems. The relative abundance was estimated from the proportional abundances of the total population. (DOCX 213 kb)

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Sheng, R., Meng, D., Wu, M. et al. Effect of agricultural land use change on community composition of bacteria and ammonia oxidizers. J Soils Sediments 13, 1246–1256 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-013-0713-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-013-0713-3

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