The Effects of Soil Depth on the Structure of Microbial Communities in Agricultural Soils in Iowa (United States)
Jingjie Hao, Yen Ning Chai, Lucas Dantas Lopes, Raziel A. Ordóñez, Emily E. Wright, Sotirios V. Archontoulis, Daniel P. Schachtman
Abstract
Determining how microbial properties change across different soils and within the soil depth profile, will be potentially beneficial to understanding the long-term processes that are involved in the health of agricultural ecosystems. Most literature on soil microbes has been restricted to the easily accessible surface soils. However, deep soils are important in soil formation, carbon sequestration, and in providing nutrients and water for plants. In the most productive agricultural systems in the USA where soybean and corn are grown, crop plant roots extend into the deeper regions of soils (> 100 cm), but little is known about the taxonomic diversity or the factors that shape deep soil microbial communities. The findings reported here highlight the importance of soil depth in shaping microbial communities, provide new information about edaphic factors that influence the deep soil communities and reveal more detailed information on taxa that exist in deep agricultural soils.