Shifts in soil chemical properties and soil microbial functional groups following a two-decade long wet prairie restoration

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Dat Ha and Chris Helzer, Eastern Nebraska Project Office, The Nature Conservancy, Aurora, NE, Dat Ha, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, Gregory J. Pec, Department of Biology, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, NE

Background/Question/Methods
Understanding the long-term effects of prairie restoration on soil chemical properties and soil microbial communities is integral to effective resource management, yet their role in restoration is often overlooked. The resulting changes in soils could therefore have substantial impacts on prairie succession and associated ecosystem processes. Here, we assessed key soil chemical properties as well as quantified bacterial and fungal abundance following two-decadal long recovery of planted wet prairies on former agricultural fields in corn-soybean rotation. Importantly, we compared changes in soil chemical properties and soil microbial communities on restored landscapes to that of never-plowed remnant wet prairies as well as current agricultural areas in continuous corn-soybean rotation.
Results/Conclusions
Overall, results indicate that soil chemical properties and microbial abundance on restorations were distinct from both current agricultural fields and remnant wet prairies. First, soil nutrient availability was two-fold greater in remnant versus restored areas whereas, soil nutrient availability in restored areas was one-fold greater in restored wet prairies versus agricultural fields. Second, total, bacterial, and fungal biomass was greater in remnant versus restored areas, with a similar trend found between restored wet prairies and agricultural fields. In particular, bacterial biomass was one-fold greater and fungal biomass was three-fold greater in restored wet prairies as compared to agricultural fields. Third, shifts in microbial abundance were positively associated with substantial changes in organic matter content, nutrient availability and plant root biomass. Taken together, our results suggest that key soil chemical properties and the abundance of microbial functional groups following two-decadal long recovery of planted wet prairies on former agricultural fields are substantially different from agricultural areas of a similar crop rotation with a trend toward local wet prairie remnants.