Artificial Vegetation Restoration Enhances Soil Fertility and Microbial Network Complexity in Eroded Areas

Abstract

Although artificial vegetation restoration measures decelerate soil erosion, the impacts on soil microbial communities and soil fertility remain unclear. This impedes our ability to assess the true effects of artificial vegetation restoration measures on degraded soil ecosystems. To address this issue, we used vegetation restoration plots in severely eroded areas in China as research objects and applied high-throughput sequencing technology to determine the composition of the soil bacterial and fungal communities. Compared with eroded sites, artificial vegetation restoration plots not only presented greater microbial diversity and network complexity but also presented increased resistance to environmental stress. Artificial vegetation restoration measures altered the microbial community composition by increasing the content of soil alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen, reducing the relative abundance of dominant microbes such as Chloroflexi and Ascomycota. Changes in microbial community characteristics were closely associated with variations in a comprehensive index of soil fertility induced by artificial vegetation restoration measures. In summary, these results indicate that artificial vegetation restoration measures have significant positive impacts on the rehabilitation of degraded soil ecosystems.