Soil microbes shift as shrubs invade remnant hill prairies

Perched high on the bluffs of the big river valleys in the Midwest are some of the last remnants of never-farmed prairie grasslands. These patches, edged by forest, are slowly being taken over by shrubs. A recent University of Illinois study examined the soil microbes on nine patches, also called "balds," that had varying degrees of shrub invasion and found an interesting shift in the composition of the microbial community.

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