Soil trenching – are microbial communities alike in experimental peatland plots measuring total and heterotrophic respiration?

Abstract

Soil trenching is a generally applied method used to differentiate heterotrophic respiration (R_HET) from total respiration in soil CO₂ flux data collection. However, the soil microbial community composition may change due to trenching and estimates of the impacts of any human-induced disturbance on R_HET might be inflated if the microbial community involved was not the same as in the ambient untrenched environment. Here, we report that the bacterial and fungal community, as measured by amplicon sequencing, of 30 different research sites in peatland forests was mostly alike in trenched and untrenched plots still four years after trenching. Soil trenching thus seems to be a feasible method to study the R_HET from peatland forest soils from the overall microbial community composition point of view as no major changes were observed.