Effects of timber harvesting on the genetic potential for carbon and nitrogen cycling in five North American forest ecozones

Cardenas, Erick; Orellana, Luis H.; Konstantinidis, Konstantinos T.; Mohn, William W.

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-21197-0

Title: Effects of timber harvesting on the genetic potential for carbon and nitrogen cycling in five North American forest ecozones

Journal Article · 16 February 2018 · Scientific Reports

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21197-0 · OSTI ID:1624382

^[1]; Orellana, Luis H. ^[2]; Konstantinidis, Konstantinos T. ^[2]; Mohn, William W. ^[1]

Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (Canada)
Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)

Forest ecosystems are critical to global biogeochemical cycles but under pressure from harvesting and climate change. We investigated the efects of organic matter (OM) removal during forest harvesting on the genetic potential of soil communities for biomass decomposition and nitrogen cycling in fve ecozones across North America. We analyzed 107 samples, representing four treatments with varied levels of OM removal, at Long-Term Soil Productivity Study sites. Samples were collected more than ten years after harvesting and replanting and were analyzed via shotgun metagenomics. High-quality short reads totaling 1.2 Tbp were compared to the Carbohydrate Active Enzyme (CAZy) database and a custom database of nitrogen cycle genes. Gene profle variation was mostly explained by ecozone and soil layer. Eleven CAZy and nine nitrogen cycle gene families were associated with particular soil layers across all ecozones. Treatment efects on gene profles were mainly due to harvesting, and only rarely to the extent of OM removal. Harvesting generally decreased the relative abundance of CAZy genes while increasing that of nitrogen cycle genes, although these efects varied among ecozones. Our results suggest that ecozone-specifc nutrient availability modulates the sensitivity of the carbon and nitrogen cycles to harvesting with possible consequences for long-term forest sustainability.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); USDOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC); Genome Canada; Genome British Columbia; TULA Foundation

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1624382

Journal Information:: Scientific Reports, Vol. 8, Issue 1; ISSN 2045-2322

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Expansion of the enzymatic repertoire of the CAZy database to integrate auxiliary redox enzymes Levasseur, Anthony; Drula, Elodie; Lombard, Vincent Biotechnology for Biofuels, Vol. 6, Issue 1, Article No. 41 https://doi.org/10.1186/1754-6834-6-41	journal	January 2013
Nitrogen and Phosphorus Limitation over Long-Term Ecosystem Development in Terrestrial Ecosystems Menge, Duncan N. L.; Hedin, Lars O.; Pacala, Stephen W. PLoS ONE, Vol. 7, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0042045	journal	August 2012
Feature Selection with the Boruta Package Kursa, Miron B.; Rudnicki, Witold R. Journal of Statistical Software, Vol. 36, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v036.i11	journal	January 2010

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