The soil microbial community actively drives biogeochemical cycling even in the plant-dormant season of winter in temperate forests. The northern ecosystems are experiencing considerable winter climate change, which causes the snowpack to become thinner and the soil freeze-thaw cycles to occur more frequently in winter. These climatic and edaphic changes may affect the microbial community function. This study aimed to characterize the soil microbial community's response to winter climate change and its consequences in nitrogen (N) cycling. We conducted a large-scale snow removal experiment in a cool-temperate forest in northern Japan to simulate a winter climate change and assessed the abundance of total bacteria and fungi and ammonia oxidizers and the bacterial community composition throughout a year. This experiment indicated that snowpack decline prolonged the soil freeze-thaw period, which increased the carbon (C) availability to soil microbes in winter. The soil microbial community then sensitively responded by increasing in abundance and shifting the composition based on each taxon's absolute and relative abundances in the way that was phylogenetically patterned, which further activated microbial N cycling. However, the soil microbial community's high resilience driven by the C availability prevented the functional and compositional responses to winter climate change from persisting into the plant-growing season, which left no apparent cascading effect on the soil microbial community and N content during the plant-growing season. This study highlights the sensitive and phylogenetically patterned response of the soil microbial community to the change in soil nutrient availability and its high resilience under winter climate change in a forest.

即使在温带森林的冬季植物休眠季节，土壤微生物群落也积极驱动生物地球化学循环。北方生态系统正经历着相当大的冬季气候变化，导致积雪变薄，土壤冻融循环在冬季更频繁地发生。这些气候和土壤变化可能会影响微生物群落功能。本研究旨在表征土壤微生物群落对冬季气候变化的响应及其对氮 (N) 循环的影响。我们在日本北部的凉爽温带森林中进行了大规模除雪实验，以模拟冬季气候变化，并评估了全年细菌、真菌和氨氧化剂的丰度以及细菌群落组成。该实验表明，积雪减少延长了土壤冻融期，从而增加了冬季土壤微生物的碳（C）有效性。然后，土壤微生物群落通过增加丰度并根据每个分类群的绝对和相对丰度以系统发育模式的方式改变组成来敏感地做出反应，这进一步激活了微生物 N 循环。然而，由 C 有效性驱动的土壤微生物群落的高弹性阻止了对冬季气候变化的功能和组成响应持续到植物生长季节，这对植物生长期间土壤微生物群落和 N 含量没有留下明显的级联效应。生长季。