Structural characteristics and influencing factors of soil microbial community in different vegetation types restoration in Zhangjiakou area

Vegetation restoration is one of the important strategies for land desertification management and habitat restoration in agro-pastoral zones, and different vegetation restoration types affect soil physicochemical properties and microbial communities. However, the mechanism of how the microbial network complexity of bacteria and fungi responds to different vegetation restoration types is not clear. For this reason, sample plots of different vegetation restoration types were set up in Zhangjiakou Tunken Forest Farm, a typical agro-pastoral zone in northern China, to reveal the response of soil microbial communities and microbial network stability to vegetation restoration types during ecological restoration. The results showed that the microbial community structures of different vegetation types differed significantly at the genus level. Regression analyses showed that vegetation restoration led to changes in soil bacterial and fungal communities, in which SOC and TN were closely related to bacteria, and the content of sticky and powdery grains was closely related to fungi. In addition, vegetation restoration in plantation forests increased the complexity and stability of microbial ecological networks compared to natural grasslands, but the proportion of positive correlations was relatively low. The results suggest that restoration of plantation forests may favour the improvement of soil microbial complexity and stability compared to natural grasslands. These findings can provide theoretical basis and technical support for the ecological restoration of ecologically fragile areas in semi-arid typical agro-pastoral zone.