Impacts of urbanization and landscape patterns on the earthworm communities in residential areas in Beijing

Abstract Earthworms play an important role in soil processes and functions. However, few studies have focused on their community patterns in perturbed systems, especially in an urban environment with a high turnover rate of land cover. In this study, we collected and identified the earthworms in the residential areas in metropolitan Beijing. We further investigated the effects of urban soil properties, urbanization and landscape patterns on the earthworm communities. The results showed that both the abundance and biomass of earthworms in residential areas in metropolitan was relatively low. The abundance of earthworms was negatively correlated with soil organic carbon (SOC) in this study. Soil moisture and pH could be considered as the most important edaphic variables that affected earthworm communities. The construction age of residential areas significantly influenced the earthworm abundance. Moreover, the earthworm community composition responded differently to urban landscape features at different scales. The percentage of impervious and green space surface, the amount of landscape cover types, patch density and landscape fragment significantly affected the earthworm assemblages. Our result discovered that the edaphic properties, urbanization as well as landscape patterns might be the potential factors that influenced the earthworm community patterns.