5 | Conclusion
Our results demonstrated that rhizosphere bacterial richness was greatly reduced by heavy grazing. At the same time, the bacterial and fungal compositions were greatly altered in both rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere regions. These findings highlight that overgrazing not only causes severe vegetation degradation (Wang et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2021) but also great decrease in diversity and strong alteration in composition of soil microbial communities, which may greatly demote the functioning of the whole ecosystem (Bardgett & van der Putten, 2014). Given that soil microbes play an important role in the restoration of degraded ecosystems (Averill et al., 2022; Coban, De Deyn, & van der Ploeg, 2022), we suggest that, along with vegetation conservation, motoring and restoring microbial communities are important for the restoration of extensive degraded grasslands in China.