Anthropogenic actions have significantly increased biological nitrogen (N) availability on a global scale. In tallgrass prairies, this phenomenon is exacerbated by land management changes, such as fire suppression. Historically, tallgrass prairie fire removed N through volatilization, but fire suppression has contributed to increased soil N availability as well as woody encroachment. Because soil microbes respond to N availability and plant growth, these changes may alter microbial composition and important microbially-mediated functions. Grassland management affects the soil environment on multiple time scales including short (fertilization or fire event), seasonal (growing vs. non-growing season), and long-term (decadal plant turnover and nutrient accumulation), therefore my goal was to understand community variability at different time scales affecting the population and community dynamics of soil microbes. I predicted soil microbes would be sensitive to environmental changes at all time scales, seasonal variation would reflect increased plant rhizodeposit-supported populations during summer and decomposers during winter, and long-term fire suppression and chronic fertilization would drive soil microbial community turnover associated with accumulation of plant litter and N.

Soil microbial responses to short-term fire/fertilization events were minimal, while microbial population sizes fluctuate seasonally and synchronously, and microbial community composition varied more with management history than at shorter time scales. Bacterial populations increased 10x during growing-season plant rhizodeposition, while fungal populations were less dynamic, but decreased in fall, possibly reflecting a shift to subsistence on soil organic matter. In contrast, microbial community composition was seasonally stable, but distinct between long-term management treatments, which may indicate accumulation of niche-defining plant or soil properties over decades. Prokaryotic communities responded to altered N availability via both fertilization and loss due to fire, with the highest abundance of "copiotrophic" (r-selected) taxa in unburned, fertilized soils. Fungal communities responded to N fertilization with higher abundance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, pathogens, and saprotrophs, possibly due to changes in nutrient stoichiometry and litter availability in fertilized plots. However, fungal response to fire was largely independent of N availability, and plant community differences were correlated with fungal, but not bacterial, community composition, highlighting the likely nutritional codependence of fungi and plants, and fungal competitive advantages for plant litter substrates. The timing of changes in soil microbial communities is critical for plant nutrition and nutrient cycling in prairies, and this novel dataset on the temporal resolution of microbial responses to environmental variability contributes to the broader understanding of ecosystem responses to global change.