Assessing Pathways to Potential N2O Emissions in Different Land Use Systems Using Targeted Pyrotag, Whole Metagenome and Soil Assay Approaches

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Assessing how microbial communities change under different land management practices is central to understanding how land use affects biogeochemical cycles.  The field of soil molecular and metagenomic analysis continues to advance rapidly.  This has opened doors for more detailed study, but also a need for robust methods.  We compared a suite of methods across different study sites to address fundamental questions about the ecology of soil denitrification.  Assays for soil denitrification along with shotgun and targeted approaches demonstrate how land use reshapes the functional potential of the denitrifier community.  Agriculture enriches for genes in the denitrification pathway which remain into early succession.  Autotrophic denitrification by AOBs are associated with highest nitrous oxide fluxes.