This work also shows that there are great quantitative differences
(often tens of percents) in microbial biomass content among
“dry” and “moist” patches of forest soil. These are even greater
than the reported reductions of enzyme activities in soils subjected
by continuous drought treatment where activity reductions
by 5–20% were typically reported for individual enzymes (Sardans
et al., 2008a,b). It turns out that forest soil at any time is a mosaic
of patches, where rates of decomposition processes vary greatly.
It remains to be explored if similar effects of moisture also exist
in other soils since there is some evidence of different response of
forest and grassland soils to drought (Fierer and Schimel, 2002).
Since precipitation or drying can rapidly change the soil moisture
content, we can anticipate that this spatial structure is not static
but rather a very dynamic one. It would be thus interesting to
address the short-term dynamics of moisture-affected processes in
soil.