Abstract
AbstractDatabases of soil pH values today guide the decisions of land managers and the experimental designs of microbiologists and biogeochemists. Soil acidity underpins fundamental properties and functions in the soil, such as the solubilities of exchangeable ions and nutrients, or bacterial use of gradients of internal and external acidity to generate ATP and turn flagellar motors. Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that soil pH has emerged as the strongest predictor of soil bacterial community composition. However, the measurement of these particular values today does not address whether soil pH accurately represents the in situ acidity of soil microhabitats where microorganisms survive and reproduce. This study analyzes and compares soils of a large-scale natural soil pH gradient and a long-term experimental soil pH gradient for the purposes of testing new methods of measuring and interpreting soil acidity when applied to soil ecology. We extracted and prepared soil solutions using laboratory simulation of levels of carbon dioxide and soil moisture more typical of soil conditions while also miniaturizing extraction methods using a centrifuge for extractions. The simulation of in situ soil conditions resulted in significantly different estimates of soil pH. Furthermore, for soils from the long-term experimental soil pH gradient trial, the simulated soil pH values substantially improved predictions of bacterial community composition (from R2 = 0.09 to R2 = 0.16). We offer suggestions and cautions for researchers considering how to better represent soil pH as it exists in situ.
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Reference117 articles.
1. Agarwal, S. , Wills, J. , Cayton, L. , Lanckriet, G. , Kriegman, D. , Belongie, S. , 2007. Generalized non-metric multidimensional scaling, in: Artificial Intelligence and Statistics. pp. 11–18.
2. The extrapolation of experimental equilibrium constant data to zero ionic strength: Critical review and new approach
3. Understanding carbonate equilibria by measuring alkalinity in experimental and natural systems;Journal of Geoscience Education,2002
4. Anderson, M.J. , 2014. Permutational multivariate analysis of variance (permanova). Wiley Statsref: Statistics Reference Online 1–15.
5. Ashcraft, E.B. (Ed.), 1957. Symposium on pH measurement: Fifty-ninth annual meeting (1956). American Society for Testing Materials, Philadelphia.