Effects of nutrient and late-season precipitation addition on ecosystem attributes for adjacent serpentine and non-serpentine soils (northern California, USA)

To better understand the ecosystem-level consequences of environmental changes, two experimental treatments (late-season precipitation addition and nutrient addition) were factorially applied to California grassland plots on three distinct soil types. Three years after treatment application began, soil samples were collected to address the following questions: (1) do the treatments shift the distribution of ecological strategies within the soil microbial community, as measured by phylogenetic estimation of ecologically important microbial traits?, (2) if so, are these shifts consistent across the different soil types?, and (3) do the treatments homogenize soil microbial compositions across the soil types, or make them more distinct? Answering these questions can help improve predictions of how environmental changes will affect important ecosystem processes catalyzed by microbes, as well as their spatial distributions across the landscape.