Assessment of soil microbial communities across Europe
In this project, soil samples were taken from 18 European Critical Zone Observatories in summer 2024, including 29 different sampling locations in five countries (Germany, France, Italy, Czech Republic, and Sweden), which represented four major land use types (forest, grassland, shrubland, field). At each location, soil samples were taken from the upper 5 cm as mixed composite samples of five individual soil cores, and three technical replicates per composite sample were subjected to DNA extraction and amplicon sequencing targeting bacterial 16S rRNA genes (V3-V4 region). Sequencing was performed on an Illumina MiSeq instrument using v3 chemistry. The goal of this study was to link microbial community composition in the soil samples to lipidome composition obtained from the same samples and to follow overall composition patterns across different geological settings and land use types.