Distribution characteristics of bacterial communities in photovoltaic industrial parks in Northwest China

Despite the rapid development of the green energy industry represented by solar photovoltaic, its ecological and environmental effects cannot be ignored. There were few reports on the impact of photovoltaic power station construction on soil bacterial community variation. In this study, the community abundance, diversity, structure, and distribution characteristics of soil bacterial in Gonghe photovoltaic power station, Qinghai Province were analyzed using quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction techniques and Illumina MiSeq sequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene. Quantitative PCR assay showed that the average16S rRNA gene copy numbers of bacteria in the soil were 8.04×109 copies per gram dry soil, which was significantly affected by the physicochemical properties of the soil. Illumina MiSeq sequencing illustrated that Actinobacteria (30.04%), Proteobacteria (29.38%), Firmicutes (2.69%), Bacteroidetes (1.51%), and Chloroflexi (1.07%) were the major phylum of soil bacterial communities, while Rubrobacter (2.51%) and Streptomyces (2.38%) was the main genera. The beta diversity indices of samples assessed via non-metric multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis indicated that the construction of a photovoltaic power station had no significant impact on the soil bacterial community structure. In addition, statistical product and service solutions and redundancy analysis demonstrated that the bacterial abundance and diversity were mainly regulated by soil water content, electrical conductivity, and other environmental factors. This study was the first time to analyze the spatial change of soil bacterial community in the desert under a photovoltaic field, which was of positive significance for the future assessment of how human disturbance affects the plant-bacteria-soil relationship in the desert ecosystem.