Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-501
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-501
08 Oct 2025
 | 08 Oct 2025
Status: this preprint is currently under review for the journal ESSD.

A global database of soil microbial communities and associated climate, soil and vegetation factors

Shutao Chen, Qi Li, and Zhenghua Hu

Abstract. Few scholars have compiled databases of soil microbial communities and associated climate, soil and vegetation factors at the global scale. However, many studies involving high-throughput sequencing of soil bacteria and fungi have been published in the past decade. In this study, we constructed a global database of the soil microbial communities and the associated climate, soil and vegetation factors, with sites on each of the seven continents and eleven ecosystem types. There were 8490 sets of soil bacterial and fungal community data for the different treatments and study sites in the database. Soil bacterial and fungal diversities were highly variable across various ecosystems. There was a highly significant (R2 = 0.4037, P < 0.001) linear regression relationship between the fungal and bacterial Shannon indices. Proteobacteria and Ascomycota were the most species-rich bacterial and fungal phyla, respectively, in most ecosystems. The median relative abundances of Proteobacteria and Ascomycota were 29.30 % and 57.49 %, respectively. The information (e.g., site names and ecosystem types) in the database enabled researchers to investigate where the most abundant bacterial or fungal phylum was located and whether the ecosystem type affected bacterial and fungal diversities and compositions at the global scale. We anticipated that this database could be further improved by adding more detailed information, such as bacterial and fungal compositions at the class, order, family, and genus levels. The database was available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16195889 (Chen et al., 2025).

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Shutao Chen, Qi Li, and Zhenghua Hu

Status: open (until 14 Nov 2025)

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Shutao Chen, Qi Li, and Zhenghua Hu

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A global database of soil microbial communities and associated climate, soil and vegetation factors Shutao Chen et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16195889

Shutao Chen, Qi Li, and Zhenghua Hu
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Short summary
Soil microorganisms play important roles in carbon stock, nutrient cycling and vegetation production. We compiled a global database of soil microbial communities and potential driving factors, such as climate, soil and vegetation. Our database included soil bacterial and fungal diversity indices and compositions. Researchers can examine which ecosystems and locations have high bacterial and fungal diversities and where the dominant bacterial and fungal compositions exist.
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