The frequency of forest fires has increased dramatically due to climate change. The occurrence of forest fires affects the carbon and nitrogen cycles and react to climate change to form a positive feedback mechanism. These effects further impact the distribution of microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN) and the soil microbial community structure. In addition, permafrost degradation can significantly affect the microorganisms in the soil. Based on these findings, this review examines the effects of fire intensity and post-fire recovery time on permafrost, the soil microbial community, MBC, MBN, and their interrelationships. This review demonstrated that (1) fires alter the condition of surface vegetation, reduce the organic layer thickness, redistribute snow, accelerate permafrost degradation, and even lead to permanent changes, where the restoration of the pre-fire state would require several decades or even centuries; (2) soil microbial community structure, soil MBC, and MBN negatively correlate with fire intensity, and the effects become more pronounced with increasing fire intensity; and (3) the structural diversity and stability of the soil microbial community were improved with time, and the amount of MBC and MBN increases as the years after a fire go by; it would still take more than ten years to recover to the pre-fire level. However, the relationship between permafrost degradation and soil microbes after forest fires is still unclear due to a lack of quantitative research on the mechanisms underlying the changes in soil microorganisms resulting from fire-induced permafrost degradation. Therefore, expanding quantitative studies and analyses of the mechanisms of interactions between forest fires, permafrost, and soil microorganisms can provide a scientific basis for understanding ecosystem carbon pools and dual-carbon targets in Arctic-boreal permafrost regions.

Under the background of climate change, freeze-thaw patterns tend to be turbulent: ecosystem function processes and their mutual feedback mechanisms with microorganisms in sensitive areas around the world are currently a hot topic of research. We studied changes of soil properties in alpine wetlands located in arid areas of Central Asia during the seasonal freeze-thaw period (which included an initial freezing period, a deep freezing period, and a thawing period), and analyzed changes in soil bacterial community diversity, structure, network in different stages with the help of high-throughput sequencing technology. The results showed that the alpha diversity of the soil bacterial community showed a continuous decreasing trend during the seasonal freeze-thaw period. The relative abundance of dominant bacterial groups (Proteobacteria (39.04%-41.28%) and Bacteroidota (14.61%-20.12%)) did not change significantly during the freeze-thaw period. At the genus level, different genera belonging to the same phylum dominated in different stages, or there were clusters of genera belonging to different phylum. For example, g_Ellin6067, g_unclassified_f_Geobacteraceae, g_unclassified_f_Gemmatimonadaceae coexisted in the same cluster, belonging to Proteobacteria, Desulfobacterota and Gemmatimonadota respectively, and their abundance increased significantly during the freezing period. This adaptive freeze-thaw phylogenetic model suggests a heterogeneous stress resistance of bacteria during the freeze-thaw period. In addition, network analysis showed that, although the bacterial network was affected to some extent by environmental changes during the initial freezing period and its recovery in the thawing period lagged behind, the network complexity and stability did not change much as a whole. Our results prove that soil bacterial communities in alpine wetlands are highly resistant and adaptive to seasonal freeze-thaw conditions. As far as we know, compared with short-term freeze-thaw cycles research, this is the first study examining the influence of seasonal freeze-thaw on soil bacterial communities in alpine wetlands. Overall, our findings provide a solid base for further investigations of biogeochemical cycle processes under future climate change.

High latitude regions are experiencing considerable winter climate change, and reduced snowpack will likely affect soil microbial communities and their function, ultimately altering microbial-mediated biogeochemical cycles. However, the current knowledge on the responses of soil microorganisms to snow cover changes in permafrost ecosystems remains limited. Here, we conducted a 2-year (six periods) snow manipulation experi-ment comprising ambient snow and snow removal treatments with three replications of each treatment to explore the immediate and legacy effects of snow removal on soil bacterial community and enzyme activity in secondary Betala platyphylla forests in the permafrost region of the Daxing'an Mountains. Generally, bacterial community diversity was not particularly sensitive to the snow removal. Seasonal fluctuations in the relative abundance of dominated bacterial taxa were observed, but snow removal merely exerted a significant impact on the bacterial community structure during the snow melting period and early vegetation growing season within two consecutive years, with a reduction in the relative abundance of Chloroflexi and an increase in the relative abundance of Actinobacteria, and no evidence of cross-season legacy effects was found. Moreover, snow removal significantly altered the soil enzyme activities in the snow stabilization period and snow melting period, with an increase in soil acid phosphatase (ACP) activity of snow melting period and a decrease in polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity of snow stabilization period as well as beta-glucosidase (BG) activity of snow stabilization period and snow melting period, but this effect did not persist into the vegetation growing periods. The seasonal variations in bacterial community and enzyme activity were mostly driven by changes in soil nutrient availability. Overall, our results suggest that soil bacterial communities have rather high resilience and rapid adaptability to snow cover changes in the forest ecosystems in the cold region of the Daxing'an Mountains.

Permafrost degradation by global warming is expected to alter the hydrological processes, which results in changes in vegetation species composition and gives rise to community succession. Ecotones are sensitive transition areas between ecosystem boundaries, attract particular interest due to their ecological importance and prompt responses to the environmental variables. However, the characteristics of soil microbial communities and extracellular enzymes along the forest-wetland ecotone in high-latitude permafrost region remain poorly understood. In this study, we evaluated the variations of soil bacterial and fungal community structures and soil extracellular enzymatic activities of 0-10 cm and 10-20 cm soil layers in five different wetland types along environmental gradients, including Larix gmelinii swamp (LY), Betula platyphylla swamp (BH), Alnus sibirica var. hirsute swamp (MCY), thicket swamp (GC), and tussock swamp (CC). The relative abundances of some dominant bacterial (Actinobacteria and Verrucomicrobia) and fungal (Ascomycota and Basidiomycota) phyla differed significantly among different wetlands, while bacterial and fungal alpha diversity was not strongly affected by soil depth. PCoA results showed that vegetation type, rather than soil depth explained more variation of soil microbial community structure. beta-glucosidase and beta-N-acetylglucosaminidase activities were significantly lower in GC and CC than in LY, BH, and MCY, while acid phosphatase activity was significantly higher in BH and GC than LY and CC. Altogether, the data suggest that soil moisture content (SMC) was the most important environmental factor contributing to the bacterial and fungal communities, while extracellular enzymatic activities were closely related to soil total organic carbon (TOC), nitrate nitrogen (NO3--N) and total phosphorus (TP).

Glaciers retreating due to global warming create important new habitats, particularly suitable for studying ecosystem development where nitrogen is a limiting factor. Nitrogen availability mainly results from microbial decomposition and transformation processes, including nitrification. AOA and AOB perform the first and rate-limiting step of nitrification. Investigating the abundance and diversity of AOA and AOB is essential for understanding early ecosystem development. The dynamics of AOA and AOB community structure along a soil chronosequence in Tianshan No. 1 Glacier foreland were analyzed using qPCR and clone library methods. The results consistently showed low quantities of both AOA and AOB throughout the chronosequence. Initially, the copy numbers of AOB were higher than those of AOA, but they decreased in later stages. The AOB community was dominated by Nitrosospira cluster ME, while the AOA community was dominated by the soil and sediment 1. Both communities were potentially connected to supra- and subglacial microbial communities during early stages. Correlation analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between the ratios of AOA and AOB with soil ammonium and total nitrogen levels. These results suggest that variations in abundance and diversity of AOA and AOB along the chronosequences were influenced by ammonium availability during glacier retreat.

In Arctic soils, warming accelerates decomposition of organic matter and increases emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), contributing to a positive feedback to climate change. Although microorganisms play a key role in the processes between decomposition of organic matter and GHGs emission, the effects of warming on temporal responses of microbial activity are still elusive. In this study, treatments of warming and precipitation were conducted from 2012 to 2018 in Cambridge Bay, Canada. Soils of organic and mineral layers were collected monthly from June to September in 2018 and analyzed for extracellular enzyme activities and bacterial community structures. The activity of hydrolases was the highest in June and decreased thereafter over summer in both organic and mineral layers. Bacterial community structures changed gradually over summer, and the responses were distinct depending on soil layers and environmental factors; water content and soil temperature affected the shift of bacterial community structures in both layers, whereas bacterial abundance, dissolved organic carbon, and inorganic nitrogen did so in the organic layer only. The activity of hydrolases and bacterial community structures did not differ significantly among treatments but among months. Our results demonstrate that temporal variations may control extracellular enzyme activities and microbial community structure rather than the small effect of warming over a long period in high Arctic soil. Although the effects of the treatments on microbial activity were minor, our study provides insight that microbial activity may increase due to an increase in carbon availability, if the growing season is prolonged in the Arctic.

Reduction in snow cover is a prominent aspect of global change. Freeze-thaw cycles (FTCs) of different amplitudes and durations in soil due to insufficient thermal insulation may alter microbial diversity and key ecological functions mediated by microorganisms. These changes could then further alter the cycling of material and energy in the ecosystem. Yet despite many assessments, the impact of FTCs upon microbial diversity remains poorly understood. Here, 546 observations from 61 published studies were collected for a global meta-analysis with the objective to explore how soil microbial diversity and C and N dynamics it drives respond to FTCs. The results showed that: in general, FTCs did not lead to a reduction of microbial alpha-diversity, but they did reduce levels of soil microbial biomass carbon, microbial biomass nitrogen, and phospholipid fatty acid by 7%, 12%, and 11%, respectively; they also significantly changed the microbial community structure. FTCs did not significantly affect the alpha-diversity of bacteria and fungi, but community structures of both were changed significantly, with that of the bacteria more sensitive to FTCs. FTCs were responsible for a 6% decrease in functions related to C, N cycling, which could be explained by the changes found in microbial biomass and community structure. FTCs could also indirectly impact microbial biomass via changed pH and soil water content (SWC). The response of microbial community to FTCs was related to the FTC frequency, freezing temperature and sampling time. FTCs had a large effect on the C and N pool components and fluxes in soil. It is particularly noteworthy that FTCs drove a 137% increase in N2O emission. Further, the changes in pH and SWC directly affected the C and N pool components and fluxes. The results of current meta-analysis deepen the comprehensive understanding of the effects of FTCs on the soil microbial community and C and N dynamics it mediated, and provide a reference for subsequent research in terms of experimental scheme and scientific issues requiring close attention.

Background Soil microorganisms in the thawing permafrost play key roles in the maintenance of ecosystem function and regulation of biogeochemical cycles. However, our knowledge of patterns and drivers of permafrost microbial communities is limited in northeastern China. Therefore, we investigated the community structure of soil bacteria in the active, transition and permafrost layers based on 90 soil samples collected from 10 sites across the continuous permafrost region using high-throughput Illumina sequencing. Results Proteobacteria (31.59%), Acidobacteria (18.63%), Bacteroidetes (9.74%), Chloroflexi (7.01%) and Actinobacteria (6.92%) were the predominant phyla of the bacterial community in all soil layers; however, the relative abundances of the dominant bacterial taxa varied with soil depth. The bacterial community alpha-diversity based on the Shannon index and the phylogenetic diversity index both decreased significantly with depth across the transition from active layer to permafrost layer. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling analysis and permutation multivariate analysis of variance revealed that microbial community structures were significantly different among layers. Redundancy analysis and Spearman's correlation analysis showed that soil properties differed between layers such as soil nutrient content, temperature and moisture mainly drove the differentiation of bacterial communities. Conclusions Our results revealed significant differences in bacterial composition and diversity among soil layers. Our findings suggest that the heterogeneous environmental conditions between the three soil horizons had strong influences on microbial niche differentiation and further explained the variability of soil bacterial community structures. This effort to profile the vertical distribution of bacterial communities may enable better evaluations of changes in microbial dynamics in response to permafrost thaw, which would be beneficial to ecological conservation of permafrost ecosystems.

Soil microbial communities in the Arctic play a critical role in regulating the global carbon (C) cycle. Vast amounts of C are stored in northern high latitude soils, and rising temperatures in the Arctic threaten to thaw permafrost, making relatively inaccessible C sources more available for mineralization by soil microbes. Few studies have characterized how microbial community structure responds to thawing permafrost in the context of varying soil chemistries associated with contrasting tundra landscapes. We subjected active layer and permafrost soils from upland and lowland tundra sites on the North Slope of Alaska to a soil-warming incubation experiment and compared soil bacterial community profiles (obtained by 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing) before and after incubation. The influence of soil composition (characterized by mid-infrared [MIR] spectroscopy) on bacterial community structure and class abundance was analyzed using redundancy and correlation analyses. We found increased abundances of Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Bacteroidetes [Sphingobacteriia] post incubation, particularly in permafrost soils. The categorical descriptors site and soil layer had the most explanatory power in our predictive models of bacterial community structure, highlighting the close relationship between soil bacteria and the soil environment. Specific soil chemical attributes characterizing the soil environments that were found to be the best predictors included MIR spectral bands associated with inorganic C, silicates, amide II (C=N stretch), and carboxylics (C-O stretch), and MIR peak ratios representing C substrate quality. Overall, these results further characterize soil bacterial community shifts that may occur as frozen environments with limited access to C sources, as is found in undisturbed permafrost, transition to warmer and more C-available environments, as is predicted in thawing permafrost due to climate change.

Sustained climate warming increases the frequency and strength of soil freeze-thaw (FT) events, which strongly affect the properties of soil microbial communities. To explore the responses and mechanisms of the frequency and strength of freeze-thaw events on soil microbial communities, a lab-scale FT test was conducted on forest soil in permafrost region from the Daxing'an Mountains, China. The number of FT cycles (FTN) had a greater effect on microbial communities than FT temperature fluctuation (FTF). The FTN and FTF explained 20.9 and 10.8% of the variation in microbial community structure, respectively, and 22.9 and 11.6% of the variation in enzyme activities, respectively. The total and subgroup microbial biomass, the ratio of fungi to bacteria (F/B), and C- and N-hydrolyzing enzyme activities all decreased with an increase in FTN. Among microbial groups, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) were the most sensitive to FT events. Based on the changes of F/B and AMF, the reduction in soil carbon sequestration caused by frequent FT events can be explained from a perspective of microorganisms. Based on redundancy analysis and Mental Test, soil moisture, total organic carbon, and total nitrogen were the major factors affecting microorganisms in FT events. In the forest ecosystem, soil water and fertilizer were important factors to resist the damage of FT to microorganism, and sufficient water and fertilizer can lighten the damage of FT events to microorganisms. As a result of this study, the understanding of the responses of soil microorganisms to the variation in FT patterns caused by climate changes has increased, which will lead to better predictions of the effects of likely climate change on soil microorganisms.