Variations in culturable bacterial communities and biochemical properties in the foreland of the retreating Tianshan No. 1 glacier

Abstract As a glacier retreats, barren areas are exposed, and these barren areas are ideal sites to study microbial succession. In this study, we characterized the soil culturable bacterial communities and biochemical parameters of early successional soils from a receding glacier in the Tianshan Mountains. The total number of culturable bacteria ranged from 2.19 × 105 to 1.30 × 106 CFU g-1 dw and from 9.33 × 105 to 2.53 × 106 CFU g-1 dw at 4 °C and 25 °C, respectively. The number of culturable bacteria in the soil increased at 25 °C but decreased at 4 °C along the chronosequence. The t...