Soil fungal diversity and community structure of grassland and forest ecosystems along land use gradient in three German Exploratories

1. Intensive investigation of soil fungal communities along land-use gradients of all experimental grassland and forest plots of the three German Biodiversity Exploratories
   – Generating knowledge on the respective impact of geographic locations, local micro- or macroclimatic level as well as land use, management levels and soil and plant parameters in relation to the soil fungal community
   – Investigation and separation between the potential soil microflora from the actually active community
2. Study of the small-scale spatio-temporal and biogeographic variations of fungal communities (SCALEMIC)
   – Analysis of the soil fungal community at the local or micro-biogeographic level at different time points (seasons)
3. Examination of changes in soil microbial metagenome and metatranscriptome in relation to two tree species and two time points (SOILOMICS)
   – Study of structural and functional diversity and variability between the plots

Based on the experience of the first period, principally in the second period we will use Next-Generation-Sequencingtechnologies toanalyse a large sample size.