Arid Zone Research ›› 2025, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3): 467-479.doi: 10.13866/j.azr.2025.03.07

• Land and Water Resources • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Responses of soil microbial communities to grazing and their relationship with environmental factors

JIANG Kangwei1(), WANG Yafei2, LIU Chentong2, LI Hong1, LYU Cheng3, Tursunnay REYIMU3, ZHANG Qingqing3()   

  1. 1. College of Grassland Science, Xinjiang Agricultural University, Urumqi 830052, Xinjiang, China
    2. College of Resource and Environment, Xinjiang Agricultural University, Urumqi 830052, Xinjiang, China
    3. College of Life Sciences, Xinjiang Agricultural University, Urumqi 830052, Xinjiang, China
  • Received:2024-09-24 Revised:2024-11-20 Online:2025-03-15 Published:2025-03-17
  • Contact: ZHANG Qingqing E-mail:waff981021@163.com;greener2010@sina.com

Abstract:

To explore the differences in the responses of different soil microbial community characteristics to grazing intensity, grasslands with different grazing intensities in the middle section of the northern slopes of Tianshan Mountains were selected as a focus for this study. Combining field investigation and indoor analysis, the changing patterns of soil microbial community characteristics with grazing intensity and their intrinsic correlation with soil factors were analyzed. The results showed that Actinobacteria and Ascomycota were the dominant phyla of bacteria and fungi, respectively. Compared with the findings upon heavy grazing, light grazing significantly increased the alpha diversity of microbial communities (P<0.05) and promoted the accumulation of soil microbial biomass carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus contents. Redundancy analysis and Mantel test showed that the soil microbial community characteristics were positively correlated with the soil total nitrogen and negatively correlated with the soil bulk density (P<0.05). Furthermore, the structural equation model showed that grazing negatively impacted the microbial diversity, richness, biomass, and OTUs characteristics by increasing the bulk density and reducing the soil nutrients (P<0.05). Compared with other indicators, soil microbial community diversity was more sensitive to grazing. In summary, light grazing is conducive to improving the microbial community, and reasonable regulation of grazing intensity is a feasible strategy to ensure the stable development of microbial communities.

Key words: grazing intensity, soil fungi, soil bacteria, environmental factor, northern slopes of Tianshan Mountains