The relationship between bacterial diversity and organic carbon mineralization in soft rock and sand compound soil.

The soil organic carbon (SOC) mineralization rate in sandy soil plays an important role in improving soil quality, and a research is needed to determine management practices that optimize the mineralization rate. When sandy soil is improved by adding soft rock, the specific promotion process of bacterium to SOC mineralization remain unclear. To investigate these mechanisms, we selected four treatments with soft rock to sand volume ratios of 0:1 (CK), 1:5 (C1), 1:2 (C2) and 1:1 (C3) to study. The mineralization rate of organic carbon was measured using the lye absorption method. High-throughput sequencing and scanning electron microscopy were used to determine the bacterial community structure and soil microstructure, respectively. The results showed that the organic carbon content of the sandy soil increased significantly (182.22-276.43%) after using the soft rock treatments. The SOC mineralization rate could be divided into two stages: a rapid decline during days 1-8 and a slow decline during days 8-60. With increased incubation time, the intensity of the cumulative release of organic carbon gradually weakened. Compared with the CK treatment, the SOC mineralization accumulation (Ct) and the potential mineralizable organic carbon content (C0) in the C1, C2, and C3 treatments increased significantly, by 106.98-225.94% and 112.22-254.08%, respectively. The cumulative mineralization rate (Cr) was 18.11% and 21.38% smaller with treatments C2 and C3, respectively. The SOC mineralization rate constant (k) decreased significantly after the addition of soft rock, while the half-turnover period (Th) changed inversely with k. Compared with the CK treatment, the number of gene copies of the soil bacteria increased by 15.38-272.53% after adding soft rock, with the most significant increase in treatment C3. The bacterial diversity index also increased significantly under treatment C3. The three dominant bacteria were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Chloroflexi. The correlation between Cr and one of the non-dominant bacteria, Firmicutes, was large, and the bacteria had a significant positive correlation with k. At the same time, the abundance of Firmicutes under treatments C2 and C3 was small. As the proportion of soft rock increased, the soil particles changed from point contact to surface contact, and the adhesion on the surface of the particles gradually increased. Results from this study show that the retention time of SOC can be increased and the carbon sequestration effect is better when the ratio of soft rock to sand is set to 1:2.