Composition of bacterial communities in seepage of forest and pasture soils of the Hainich Critical Zone Exploratory (Germany)

In this study we investigated the community structure of bacteria which are transported in soils by seepage, assessed by using lysimeters that collect seepage in a soil depth of 30 and 60 cm. Lysimeters were installed under forest and pasture at different locations within the Hainich Critical Zone Exploratory (CZE). Samples for microbial analyses were taken during a 1.5 year period (June 2016 to January 2018) at different time points representative of hydrological winter and summer season. Bacterial biomass was retrieved from seepage by filtration through 0.2 µm pore size filters and subsequent DNA extraction from these filters. Bacterial community structure was assessed by amplicon sequencing using Illumina MiSeq, targeting bacterial 16S rRNA genes with the primer combination Bakt_0341F/Bakt_0785R.