Xue, Peipei, Minasny, Budiman, Wadoux, Alexandre M. J.‐C., Dobarco, Mercedes Román, McBratney, Alex, Bissett, Andrew, and de Caritat, Patrice (2024) Drivers and human impacts on topsoil bacterial and fungal community biogeography across Australia. Global Change Biology, 30 (3). e17216.

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Abstract

Soil microbial diversity mediates a wide range of key processes and ecosystem services influencing planetary health. Our knowledge of microbial biogeography patterns, spatial drivers and human impacts at the continental scale remains limited. Here, we reveal the drivers of bacterial and fungal community distribution in Australian topsoils using 1384 soil samples from diverse bioregions. Our findings highlight that climate factors, particularly precipitation and temperature, along with soil properties, are the primary drivers of topsoil microbial biogeography. Using random forest machine-learning models, we generated high-resolution maps of soil bacteria and fungi across continental Australia. The maps revealed microbial hotspots, for example, the eastern coast, southeastern coast, and west coast were dominated by Proteobacteria and Acidobacteria. Fungal distribution is strongly influenced by precipitation, with Ascomycota dominating the central region. This study also demonstrated the impact of human modification on the underground microbial community at the continental scale, which significantly increased the relative abundance of Proteobacteria and Ascomycota, but decreased Chloroflexi and Basidiomycota. The variations in microbial phyla could be attributed to distinct responses to altered environmental factors after human modifications. This study provides insights into the biogeography of soil microbiota, valuable for regional soil biodiversity assessments and monitoring microbial responses to global changes.

Item ID:	94179
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1365-2486
Copyright Information:	© 2024 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Date Deposited:	01 Oct 2026 07:37
FoR Codes:	41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4106 Soil sciences > 410603 Soil biology @ 100%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180601 Assessment and management of terrestrial ecosystems @ 100%
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