Long‐term prescribed burning and mowing shape soil bacterial community structure and functional potential in a restored tallgrass prairie ecosystem

Questions How do long‐term prescribed burning and mowing influence soil bacterial community diversity, composition, and predicted functional potential in restored tallgrass prairie ecosystems, and do microbial responses observed a decade earlier persist under continued management? Location Glacier Creek Preserve (GCP), Eastern Nebraska, United States. Method Prescribed burning and mowing have been applied at GCP for over 40 and 20 years, respectively, to restore and maintain tallgrass prairie vegetation. We revisited the same experimental plots that were first surveyed a decade earlier and characterized the soil bacterial communities using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and FAPROTAX functional prediction, providing a rare temporal reassessment of the long‐term management effects. We also evaluated relationships between bacterial communities and soil physicochemical properties. Results Burned plots exhibited significantly higher Shannon diversity than mowed plots, while bacterial community composition and predicted functional profiles differed among management treatments. Long‐term burning enriched Chitinophagaceae and ammonia‐oxidizing Nitrosomonadaceae , whereas mowing favored Rhizobiaceae and Pyrinomonadaceae . Soil pH and ammonium were the strongest predictors of bacterial community structure, followed by soil moisture and nitrate.