IJERPH, Vol. 16, Pages 1805: The Effects of Pavement Types on Soil Bacterial Communities across Different Depths (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health)

Pavements have remarkable effects on topsoil micro-organisms, but it remains unclear how subsoil microbial communities respond to pavements. In this study, ash trees (Fraxinus Chinensis) were planted on pervious pavement (PP), impervious pavement (IPP), and non-pavement (NP) plots. After five years, we determined the soil bacterial community composition and diversity by high-throughput sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. The results of our field experiment reveal that the presence of pavement changed soil bacterial community composition and decreased the Shannon index, but had no impact on the Chao 1 at the 0–20 cm layer. However, we achieved the opposite result at a depth of 20–80 cm. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in bacterial community composition using the Shannon index and the Chao 1 at the 80–100 cm layer. Soil total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), available phosphorus (AP), NO3−-N, and available potassium (AK) were the main factors that influenced soil bacterial composition and diversity across different pavements. Soil bacterial composition and diversity had no notable difference between PP and IPPs at different soil layers. Our results strongly indicate that pavements have a greater impact on topsoil bacterial communities than do subsoils, and PPs did not provide a better habitat for micro-organisms when compared to IPPs in the short term.