Fig. 1: Drought effects on microbial biomass C, N and P.

Colour indicates soil treatment (control = grey, 1 year = light blue, 10 years = blue). The top graphs show microbial biomass carbon (MBC), nitrogen (MBN) and phosphorous (MBP). MBC was not significantly affected by drought (F-value: 2.02, p = 0.18), while MBN and MBP were (F-value: 5.7, p = 0.04, n = 4; F-value: 4.44, p = 0.06, n = 4). The same pattern was present in all the three values, where control and the 10-year treatment had similar values and the 1-year treatment was different. The bottom graphs show the stoichiometric ratios of microbial biomass. The ratio of C-to-N and C-to-P show similar results, where the 1-year treatment was significantly different from both control and 10 years (respectively, F-value: 5.72, p = 0.0249, n = 4; F-value: 8.06, p = 0.0098, n = 4). The ratio of N-to-P was not statistically affected by drought, and the 10-year treatment values ranged between the 1 year and control. Letters represent results from two-sided Tukey HSD post hoc test (a point next to letter represents a p-value on the 0.05 threshold). Box centre line represents median, box limits the upper and lower quartiles, whiskers the 1.5x interquartile range, while separated points represent outliers. The sample size ‘n’ represents biologically independent samples.