Afforestation of Pinus sylvestri var. mongolica remodeled soil bacterial community and metabolic function in the Horqin Desert

Soil bacteria are widely investigated and have led to a much better understanding of their roles in terrestrial ecosystem. Currently, the attention on soil bacteria shifts the focus from the examination of community structure, diversity and driving force to functions. However, it’s a knowledge gap of microbial influence and a niche to predict the change of metabolic function after afforestation in desert ecosystem. Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica is the most important evergreen species in the desertified Northern China. So, we used the 16S rRNA high throughput sequencing and PICRUSt platform to identify soil bacterial community and metabolic function across stand ages (HQh: half-mature forest, HQn: nearly-mature forest, HQm: mature forest) and CK (natural grassland) in the Horqin Desert. This data included soil bacterial community and metabolic function，soil characteristics after afforestation of Pinus sylvestri var. mongolica, which was used to understand clearly the paper "Afforestation of Pinus sylvestri var. mongolica remodeled soil bacterial community and metabolic function in the Horqin Desert".