Dry-down day 7 rep 1
soil metagenome
Surface soils (0-20 cm deep, 5 cm diameter cores) were collected from 16 randomly selected locations immediately adjacent to the Tall Wheatgrass Irrigation Field Trial experiment in Prosser, WA. Samples were transported to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) on ice and stored at 4 until processing. Soils were homogenized on ethanol-sterilized 4 mm sieves, and rocks were removed. Sixty grams (dry weight soil equivalent) were weighed into autoclaved 4 oz jars, and the soils were brought to 75% water holding capacity by addition of sterile deionized water. Three replicate incubations were set up for each of the two sampling time points (n=6). First, the soils were preincubated for one week during which time they were gradually exposed to increasing temperature until the target incubation temperature of 30C average summer temperature  was reached. The incubation temperatures were: 10 C on day 1, 15C on day 3, 25C on day 5 and 30C on day 7. During the pre-incubation water was added to the soils daily to maintain them at 75% water holding capacity by mass. Once at 30C, three incubation jars continued to incubate at 30C, without any further moisture additions. Moisture loss was monitored by mass, until complete desiccation was achieved at 9 days after drying commenced. Three replicate samples were harvested at the indicated timepoints. Wet-up treatments were performed at 0 and 7 days after dessication was achieved (days 9 and 16 after drying commenced). Water was added to 75% WHC and samples were taken after 10, 30 and 90 minutes. Sample was stored at -80C until being processed for DNA and RNA extractions.