Soil properties and microbial community in the rhizosphere of Populus alba var. pyramidalis along a chronosequence.

By maintaining soil structure and quality, soil microbial communities usually play important role in many forest ecosystem processes, including ecological succession. Understanding changes in the microbial communities of areas afforested with stands of different ages is of interest in ecology. Populus alba var. pyramidalis Bunge has been widely planted in Northwest China for ecological restoration. Rhizospheric soil samples were collected from 4-, 9-, 15-, 25- and 30-year-old plantations of P. alba to measure soil characteristics and soil microbial community diversity using Illumina MiSeq sequencing. The soil nutrition concentration and enzymatic activities decreased with depth of soil layer increased. In terms of stand age, alkaline phosphatase and dehydrogenase and the contents of nitrate N, available P and soil organic content (SOC) increased gradually. According to Illumina MiSeq sequencing results, the fungal and bacterial community structure varied with stand age, and diversity of fungi was less than bacteria. With increasing stand age, fungal community diversity indexes first increased and then decreased, peaked at 25y or 30y. RDA results suggested that soil available P and nitrate N were the most important factors governing fungal community structure, while available P contributed significantly to the variance of the bacterial community. Structural equation modelling (SEM) results indicated soil available P, nitrate N and SOC contents largely explained the shift in the microbial community structure along the cultivation chronosequence, and soil enzyme activities were related with changes in microbial community. Our results illustrated that the successional changes in microbial communities in the P. alba plantations can largely be attributed to changes in soil nutrition level along the chronosequence.