Summary
Soils provide the substrate for important microbial mechanisms that moderate a variety of processes in both managed and natural terrestrial ecosystems. Australian soils are particularly ‘stressed’ and are considered to be highly weathered and nutrient deficient. This places increased pressure on the Australian cotton industry to sustainably increase productivity to support the fibre demands of a growing global population. We explored Vertosol subsoils (>30 cm) under rotational cotton crops, measuring the distribution of soil microbial activity (SMA) and biomass (SMB) to 100 cm depth, as influenced by crop system and time, using respiration-based experiments. Seasonal SMA fluctuations were considered by capturing the long-term SMA between systems using stable oxygen isotope methodolo
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