Linking Soil Bacterial Communities to Soil Aggregates after Afforestation in a Karst Rocky Desertification Region

Afforestation influences soil aggregates and the microenvironment, it also affects bacterial communities. However, interactions between aggregation, properties, community that occur following afforestation are still unclear rarely studied in karst ecosystems. Soil samples were collected from cropland, for reference, natural secondary forests managed a rocky desertification region of Southwest China. isolated using wet-sieving method, composition was determined high-throughput 16S rRNA sequencing. promoted significant macro-aggregation (p < 0.05) increased organic carbon (38%), nitrogen (35.4%), exchangeable Ca (78.6%), water contents (4.1%) but decreased pH bulk density. The changes these properties had marked effects on abundance community. Variation-partitioning analysis showed that, together, characteristics explained 23.4% variation community, their interaction formed largest contribution (14.6%). Overall, our findings suggest both may shift communities by promoting altering properties.