Response of soil bacteria to anthropogenic soil variables at large spatial scales

We sought to determine the relative influences of spatial and environmental factors on entire bacterial communities and individual taxa, in both natural and human-impacted soils in the upper North Island of New Zealand. We conducted 16S rRNA (v3-v4 region) amplicon sequencing on soil samples from 110 native forests, plantation forest, horticultural or pastoral sites, which constitute the dominant land uses within temperate climate zones. These sites were located between 5 m and 300 km apart. This bacterial data was paired with extensive site metadata to determine which environmental variables were correlated with changes in bacterial community composition as a whole, as well as with changes in the abundance of specific taxa.