Key microbial taxa play essential roles in maintaining soil muti-nutrient cycling following an extreme drought event in ecological buffer zones along the Yangtze River

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Climatic extremes, especially extreme droughts, are occurring more frequently and profoundly impacting biogeochemical processes. However, the relative importance of microbial communities on soil nutrient cycling and community maintenance under natural extreme drought events remains elusive. During a record-breaking drought in the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) in the summer of 2022, we collected ambient soils and drought-affected bare and vegetated soils in ecological buffer zones from two sites with similar soil and vegetation characteristics along the YRB, and examined the relative contribution of soil bacterial communities in supporting multi-nutrient cycling index (MNCI) involving carbon-, nitrate- and phosphorus-cycling and their associations with microbial network. Extreme drought decreased (