Understory herb layer exerts strong controls on soil microbial communities in subtropical plantations

The patterns and drivers of soil microbial communities in forest plantations remain inadequate although they have been extensively studied in natural forest and grassland ecosystems. In this study, using data from 12 subtropical plantation sites, we found that the overstory tree biomass and tree cover increased with increasing plantation age. However, there was a decline in the aboveground biomass and species richness of the understory herbs as plantation age increased. Biomass of all microbial community groups (i.e. fungi, bacteria, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and actinomycete) decreased with increasing plantation age; however, the biomass ratio of fungi to bacteria did not change with increasing plantation age. Variation in most microbial community groups was mainly explained by the understory herb (i.e. herb biomass and herb species richness) and overstory trees (i.e. tree biomass and tree cover), while soils (i.e. soil moisture, soil organic carbon, and soil pH) explained a relative low percentage of the variation. Our results demonstrate that the understory herb layer exerts strong controls on soil microbial community in subtropical plantations. These findings suggest that maintenance of plantation health may need to consider the management of understory herb in order to increase the potential of plantation ecosystems as fast-response carbon sinks.