SUSALPS: Sustainable use of alpine and pre-alpine grassland soils in a changing climate

This study is part of project Sustainable use of alpine and pre-alpine grassland soils in a changing climate. This study aims to investigate soil microbiomes diversity and composition in pre-alpine grasslands, to compare them at two different depths (0- 5 cm and 5- 15 cm) among grasslands located along an elevation gradient. In the present study, we analyzed the soil bacterial composition in three pre-Alpine grasslands (Esterberg, Graswang and Fendt) located in south Germany where an agricultural management from extensive to intensive is applied along an elevation gradient of increased temperature and decreased precipitation. These grasslands are particularly susceptible to climate change and land use intensity which impact soil health and ecosystem functions in this geographic region. We performed Illumina amplicon sequencing by targeting the 16S rRNA gene. The primer pair 27F and 357R, corresponding to S-D-Bact-0008-a-S-16 and S-D-Bact-0343-a-A-15, respectively, were used to amplify the hypervariable regions V1 and V2 of the 16S rRNA gene.