The map is a spatially explicit analysis of bacterial biodiversity within the British Isles. Soils were collected from over 1000 sites as part of the 2007 Countryside Survey and bacterial communities assessed using a molecular community profiling tool (tRFLP). The pairwise similarities between bacterial communities were assessed using two dimensional Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) ordination. The map shows a spatial interpolation (IDW approach) of the first axis scores for each soil community, therefore regions of a similar colour share a similar community. Most environmental gradients were associated with these first axis scores, and so the bacterial map shares commonality with other maps displaying soil parameters such as pH or carbon, and biotic features such as plant diversity.
The main differences in bacterial communities are therefore reflected in the broad environmental, climatic and land use features of the landscape.
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