Sustainability of Urban Soil Management: Analysis of Soil Physicochemical Properties and Bacterial Community Structure under Different Green Space Types

Junda Zhang, Suyan Li, Xiangyang Sun, Jing Tong, Zhen Fu and Jing Li
Additional contact information
Junda Zhang: College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
Suyan Li: College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
Xiangyang Sun: College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
Jing Tong: Vegetable Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100097, China
Zhen Fu: College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
Jing Li: College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: Soil bacterial communities play a key role in nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning. This study aims to reveal how green space type impacts soil quality and the bacterial community, which finally contributes to suggesting strategies for managing sustainable environments in urban areas. For this purpose, urban green space soils in this study are divided into four different types; park green space (PARK), street green space (STREET), attached green space (ATTACH) and residential green space (RESID). Results showed that significant differences were observed for soil physicochemical properties. Soil organic matter, total nitrogen, soil moisture content and available nitrogen in the ATTACH and PARK soils were significantly higher than in the STREET and RESID soils. Across the four green space types, the structure of bacterial communities was dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Chloroflexi at the phylum level. The diversity and richness of bacteria were significantly higher in the PARK and ATTACH soils than in the RESID and STREET soils. Results of principal component analysis (PCoA) showed that soil bacterial communities could be clustered into four different groups according to different green space types. In addition, analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) also implied that soil samples differed significantly from others. Redundancy analysis (RDA) and Spearman correlation analysis both showed that the contents of soil organic matter, total nitrogen, soil moisture and pH had great influence on the structures of bacterial communities. In summary, these results suggest that soil physicochemical properties and bacterial communities can be strongly affected by green space types, and thus, objective assessment of a particular measure can be provided to land managers and policy makers for informed decision-making in urban development and sustainability.

Keywords: green space types; sustainable development; soil physicochemical properties; soil bacterial communities; high-throughput sequencing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1395/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1395/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:5:p:1395-:d:211531

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().