It is unclear how different management practices influence tropical soil ecosystems in post-logging habitats over short or long terms. In this project, we demonstrated that critical differences in soil C and N metrics, organic C use efficiency, and DNA-identified bacterial community structures occurred along a land use disturbance gradient in a humid tropical primary forest (PF) Costa Rica following deforestation and conversion of the forest into logging roads (LR), grasslands that were grazed and then abandoned (GR), and regenerating secondary forests (SF). The mean proportion of DNA sequences, their richness and diversity for total bacterial genera and those linked to N-fixation, ammonium oxidation, and degradation of complex organic C compounds were generally greater in the PF than the SF soils, followed by the GR and then the LR soils. The specific land use-associated changes in soil NO₃⁻/NH₄⁺, TN, TOC, and biomass C/TOC best predicted these differences in bacterial communities. The SF soil ecosystems were on a better trajectory towards similarity with the PF soils, followed by the GR soils, with the LR soils still being the most negatively influenced. This study showed that the soil biotic and abiotic factors were clearly different along the disturbance gradient, with each soil ecosystem responding differently to the forest clearing, followed by development of logging roads, abandoned grasslands, and secondary forests. This work also showed that differences in C and N metrics, and the structure of total and functional group communities of bacteria, in particular, the genera Solibacter, Burkholderia, Bradyrhizobium, Comamonas, Geobacter, Azospirillum, Nitrospira, Nitrosovibrio, Rhodoplanes and Phenylobacterium can serve as future indicators of soil damage and recovery following different types of disturbances.

目前尚不清楚不同的管理方法是如何短期或长期影响伐木后生境中的热带土壤生态系统的。在这个项目中，我们证明了在森林砍伐和转化后，湿润的热带原始森林（PF）哥斯达黎加的土壤利用C和N指标，有机碳利用效率以及DNA识别的细菌群落结构在土地利用扰动梯度上发生了关键差异。将森林砍伐成伐木公路（LR），放牧后被抛弃的草地（GR），以及再生次生林（SF）。PF土壤中DNA序列的平均比例，它们在整个细菌属中的丰富性和多样性以及与N固定，铵氧化和复杂有机C化合物降解有关的序列通常比SF土壤中大，其次是GR，然后是LR土壤。₃ ^- / NH ₄ ⁺，TN，TOC，和生物质C / TOC最佳预测中的细菌群落这些差异。SF土壤生态系统与PF土壤的相似性向更好的方向发展，其次是GR土壤，而LR土壤仍然受到最大的负面影响。这项研究表明，土壤生物和非生物因素在扰动梯度上明显不同，每种土壤生态系统对森林砍伐的反应不同，其次是伐木路，废弃草地和次生林的发展。这项工作还表明，C和N指标的差异，以及细菌（尤其是自噬菌属，伯克霍尔德氏菌，缓生根瘤菌属）的总细菌群和功能菌群的结构不同，丛毛单胞，地杆菌，固氮螺菌属，硝化螺，亚硝化，Rhodoplanes和Phenylobacterium可以作为土壤的破坏和恢复的未来指标以下不同类型的干扰。