SHORT COMMUNICATION Bacterial community structure in soils of the Tibetan Plateau affected by discontinuous permafrost or seasonal freezing Julien Ollivier & Sizhong Yang & Corina Dörfer & Gerhard Welzl & Peter Kühn & Thomas Scholten & Dirk Wagner & Michael Schloter Received: 7 June 2013 /Revised: 23 September 2013 /Accepted: 2 October 2013 /Published online: 18 October 2013 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstract In this study, we assessed the abundance and diver- sity of bacterial communities by 16S rRNA gene-based qPCR and T-RFLP across different soil depths of three sites located on the Tibetan Plateau which are affected by discontinuous permafrost or characterized as seasonally frozen ground. Our data indicates that bacterial community structure was signifi- cantly influenced by soil depth mainly at the site affected by seasonal freezing and thawing. In contrast at sites affected by permafrost, diversity pattern of bacterial communities in the top soil and deeper soil layers changed to a far lower extend. This might be related to the fact that the investigated sites were not waterlogged at the permafrost layer, thus no processes that shifts towards bacterial communities, which require anoxic environments, could be expected. Overall, at all sites, labile and stable C as well as N pools act as main drivers for bacterial communities. Keywords Tibetan Plateau . Permafrost . Bacterial diversity . 16S rRNA gene fingerprinting Introduction Worldwide, in most permafrost affected areas, the climate warming has induced a significant reduction of C stocks due to increased microbial activities and subsequent degradation processes in soil (Wagner et al. 2007; Schuur et al. 2009; Graham et al. 2012). In permafrost affected areas of the Tibetan plateau, however, several authors have suggested soil moisture as an additional driver for the dynamics of soil N (Baumann et al. 2009) and organic C stocks (Doerfer et al. 2013) after an increase in temperature due to the low precip- itation. Thus, it is unclear if predictions made on the influence of global warming for permafrost affected soils can be gener- alized. In this respect, the active layer (i.e., the permafrost overlaying soil) that is mostly influenced by environmental factors, including pronounced seasonal freeze–thaw cycles, plays an important role (Steven et al. 2006; Wagner et al. 2009). However, studies, which compare microbial commu- nity structure and function in this compartment and which link diversity pattern of microbes to the respective abiotic soils properties, are still limited mainly for permafrost affected soils of the Tibetan plateau. To study the impact of global warming on permafrost affected soils, seasonally frozen soils from the same area are a good model to identify major consequences of an increase in temperature on biotic and abiotic soil properties. Therefore, in the present study, we compared bacterial abundance and di- versity pattern at different soil depths of three sites located on the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau, affected by discontinuous permafrost or have been characterized by seasonal freezing, using 16S rRNA gene qPCR and fingerprinting. The obtained data on bacterial diversity was linked to the respective phys- icochemical soil properties. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00374-013-0869-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. J. Ollivier (*) : G. Welzl : M. Schloter Research Unit Environmental Genomics, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Neuherberg, Germany e-mail: julien.ollivier@helmholtz-muenchen.de S. Yang : D. Wagner German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), Helmholtz Zentrum Potsdam, Section 4.5 Geomicrobiology, Potsdam, Germany C. Dörfer : P. Kühn : T. Scholten Physical Geography and Soil Science, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany Biol Fertil Soils (2014) 50:555–559 DOI 10.1007/s00374-013-0869-4