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Impact of tropical lowland rainforest conversion into rubber and oil palm plantations on soil microbial communities

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Abstract

Focusing on Sumatra, a hotspot of tropical lowland rainforest transformation, we investigated effects of the conversion of rainforests into rubber agroforests (“jungle rubber”), intensive rubber, and oil palm plantations on the communities of litter and soil microorganisms and identified factors responsible for these changes. Litter basal respiration, microbial biomass, total bacterial phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs), and fungal PLFAs did not vary significantly with rainforest conversion. In litter of converted ecosystems, the concentration of certain PLFAs including the Gram-negative bacteria marker PLFA cy17:0 and the Gram-positive bacteria marker PLFA i17:0 was reduced as compared to rainforest, whereas the concentration of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) marker neutral lipid fatty acid (NLFA) 16:1ω5c increased. As indicated by redundancy analysis, litter pH and carbon concentration explained most of the variation in litter microbial community composition. In soil, microbial biomass did not vary significantly with rainforest conversion, whereas basal respiration declined. Total PLFAs and especially that of Gram-negative bacteria decreased, whereas PLFA i17:0 increased with rainforest conversion. The concentration of fungal PLFAs increased with rainforest conversion, whereas NLFA 16:1ω5c did not change significantly. Redundancy analysis indicated that soil pH explained most of the variation in soil microbial community composition. Overall, the data suggest that conversion of rainforests into production systems results in more pronounced changes in microbial community composition in soil as compared to litter. In particular, the response of fungi and bacteria was more pronounced in soil, while the response of AMF was more pronounced in litter. Notably, only certain bacterial markers but not those of saprotrophic fungi and AMF were detrimentally affected by rainforest conversion.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the State Ministry of Research and Technology of Indonesia (RISTEK) for the research permit and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and Ministry of Forestry (PHKA) for the collection permit. We thank many Indonesian organizations for granting us access to the sampling plots and use of their properties. We thank the many colleagues and helpers for their support in the field and the laboratory assistance. We thank Claudia Dislich for sharing literature database, Michael Euler for core plot farmer survey database. Financial support was provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the framework of the collaborative German-Indonesian research project CRC990 (EFForTS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. J.F. Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, Georg August University Göttingen, Berliner Str. 28, 37073, Göttingen, Germany

    Valentyna Krashevska, Bernhard Klarner, Mark Maraun & Stefan Scheu

  2. Department of Soil Sciences and Land Resources, Institut Pertanian Bogor-IPB, Damarga Campus, Bogor, 16680, Indonesia

    Rahayu Widyastuti

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  1. Valentyna Krashevska
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  2. Bernhard Klarner
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  4. Mark Maraun
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  5. Stefan Scheu
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Correspondence to Valentyna Krashevska.

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Krashevska, V., Klarner, B., Widyastuti, R. et al. Impact of tropical lowland rainforest conversion into rubber and oil palm plantations on soil microbial communities. Biol Fertil Soils 51, 697–705 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-015-1021-4

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