soil bacterial community inestigation during soil air-drying and archiving

The shifts in bacterial community compositions between the fresh and air-dried soils, as well as air-dried and 427-day archived soils, from four agricultural sites were systemically investigated by using high-throughput sequencing. The air-drying and preservation effects were compared in a quantitative way in relation to community distance; additionally, the role of ecological context variables governing the air-drying effect was quantified by using random forest and nonlinear models.