Responses of soil ammonia oxidizers and denitrifiers to different grazing intensities

Abstract

Soil nitrifiers and denitrifiers play key roles in determining soil nitrogen (N) availability, nitrate leaching, and N2O emission, and thus they could be indicative to the effects of grazing intensity on grassland ecosystems as well as grassland degradation. In this study, soil samples were collected from a long-term field experiment with different grazing intensities (low-level, middle-level, and high-level grazing) in arid and semi-arid grasslands in Inner Mongolia. We analyzed the responses of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB), and denitrifiers, in terms of abundance, community composition, and diversity, at different grazing intensities using real-time PCR..