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.