Effect of environmental variation and spatial distance on soil microbial communites across sand dune chronosequences

Developmental chronosequences with ages ranging from ~105 years to 500,000 years across Georgia and Michigan were studied to investigate the effects of geographic distance and relationships with soil properties on bacterial community composition. The study sites included 14 soils which were 1- 1700 km apart. We surveyed the diversity using high-throughput pyrosequencing to quantify the effects of local geochemical properties and geographic distance for bacterial community structure and membership.