Bacterial growth in the constantly moist control soil decreased gradually over the course of the experiment, described with a negative exponential function (Fig. 2). Bacterial growth after rewetting of the 4-days dried soil was initially much lower than the moist control. Then, bacterial growth increased linearly with time and reached the level of the moist control soil after w13 h. The maximum growth was around 3 times higher than the moist control and occurred 27 h after rewetting. After this maximum, bacterial growth decreased exponentially over time (Fig. 2). For the 1-year dried soil, bacterial growth was below or close to the detection level for about 16 h. After this lag period of no growth, bacterial growth increased exponentially in parallel with the exponential increase in respiration (Fig. 1). An intrinsic bacterial growth rate (mbact) was estimated to be 0.33 h1. The peak in bacterial growth was found after about 30 h, followed by an exponential decrease.