Rainwater-driven transport of matter and microbes from phyllosphere to soil in a temperate beech forest

The study investigated rainwater-derived transport of bacterial communities from phyllosphere to soil from a beech dominated temperate forest at the Hainich Critical Zone Exploratory, Germany. Sampling of water samples as well as of leave and soil samples for sequencing was conducted at two time points in 2020 after rain events. The bacterial community composition was assessed by amplicon sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene using an Illumina MiSeq device, with the primer pair Bakt_0341F/Bakt_799R.