Soil Sampling
Soil samples were collected to assess bacterial communities (described below) at 6-hour intervals (00:00, 06:00, 12:00, and 18:00). We sampled across a 24-hour sampling period at each plot once per week repeated across 6 consecutive weeks from 14 June to 21 July 2022, resulting in six replicates of each site-land cover-time combination (n = 6 replicates x 2 study sites x 2 land cover plots x 4 time intervals = 96 total samples).
Bacterial community soil samples: Soils were collected from the top 10 cm at nine grid points following the Biomes of Australian Soil Environments database protocols (Bissett et al., 2016) using a decontaminated trowel (by using 5% bleach and DECON-90 following protocols in Cando-Dumancela et al., 2021; 2022) and homogenised in a sterile sample bag. From this, subsamples of 50 mL were collected and stored on ice, then frozen at -20˚C within one hour of sampling.
Physicochemical soil samples: From the composite soil samples taken for bacterial community analysis, 200 g was subsampled from all 12:00 samples (per plot n = 6) and sent for physicochemical analysis. Samples were analysed by CSBP Labs (Bibra Lake, WA 6163), quantifying levels of phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, organic carbon, nitrate nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen, electrical conductivity, pH, and texture using protocols described on the service provider’s website (https://www.csbplab.com.au/tests/soil).