Sustainability of Urban Soil Management: Analysis of Soil Physicochemical Properties and Bacterial Community Structure under Different Green Space Types

• Main Authors: Junda Zhang, Suyan Li, Xiangyang Sun, Jing Tong, Zhen Fu, Jing Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-03-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: green space types; sustainable development; soil physicochemical properties; soil bacterial communities; high-throughput sequencing
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1395

Soil bacterial communities play a key role in nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning. This study aims to reveal how green space type impacts soil quality and the bacterial community, which finally contributes to suggesting strategies for managing sustainable environments in urban areas. For this purpose, urban green space soils in this study are divided into four different types; park green space (PARK), street green space (STREET), attached green space (ATTACH) and residential green space (RESID). Results showed that significant differences were observed for soil physicochemical properties. Soil organic matter, total nitrogen, soil moisture content and available nitrogen in the ATTACH and PARK soils were significantly higher than in the STREET and RESID soils. Across the four green space types, the structure of bacterial communities was dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Chloroflexi at the phylum level. The diversity and richness of bacteria were significantly higher in the PARK and ATTACH soils than in the RESID and STREET soils. Results of principal component analysis (PCoA) showed that soil bacterial communities could be clustered into four different groups according to different green space types. In addition, analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) also implied that soil samples differed significantly from others. Redundancy analysis (RDA) and Spearman correlation analysis both showed that the contents of soil organic matter, total nitrogen, soil moisture and pH had great influence on the structures of bacterial communities. In summary, these results suggest that soil physicochemical properties and bacterial communities can be strongly affected by green space types, and thus, objective assessment of a particular measure can be provided to land managers and policy makers for informed decision-making in urban development and sustainability.