The above results show that there is a significant effect of soil
moisture content on soil microbial biomass and enzymatic processes.
Linear regression models were used to calculate the extent
of these effects on individual parameters. The results demonstrated
that the total and bacteria-specific PLFA content in the dry patches
of soil may represent only 17–63% of the values in the moist soil
patches (Table 4), and the difference between dry and moist samples
was at least 15–69% at a 95% probability level. The effect of
soil moisture content on enzyme activities is more seasonal, as
stated above, but the effect of soil moisture content may result
in great differences in enzyme activities, often greater than 50%
when comparing the dry and moist patches. Since the quantitative
response of fungi-specific and bacteria-specific PLFA to moisture
content was different, the quantitative composition of microbial
community was also affected by soil moisture content: the F/B ratio
significantly increased with soil moisture content in the L horizon
sampled in May (Table 2, Fig. 1).