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Understanding the spatial patterns of soil microbial communities and influencing factors is a prerequisite for soil health assessments and site-specific management to improve crop production. However, soil microbial community structure at the field scale is complicated by the interactions among topography and soil properties. The objectives of this study were to (1) characterize the spatial variability patterns of soil microbial communities at the field scale; (2) assess the influence of soil physico-chemical properties, topography and management on soil microbial biomass spatial variability. This study was conducted in a 194-ha commercially-managed field in Hale County, Texas, in 2017. A total of 212 composite soil samples were collected at 0–0.15 m depth and analyzed via the ester-linked fatty acid methyl ester (EL-FAME) method to characterize the microbial community structure and biomass. Soil electrical conductivity (EC), pH, soil texture, soil water content (SWC), soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) were determined for each soil sample. Topographic attributes, including elevation and slope, were derived from real-time kinematic (RTK) point elevation data. Interpolated microbial community maps at this scale revealed a spatially structured distribution of microbial biomass and diversity with patches of several hundred meters in different directions corresponding to the distribution of soil types and topography. Most of the microbial communities were autocorrelated at greater ranges within the same soil types than across different soils. The distribution of total soil microbial biomass was mainly affected by SOC and SWC. Soil pH and C:N ratio had a negative impact on the biomass of bacterial communities. Biomass of fungal communities was negatively influenced by slope and elevation. The results of this study have the potential to provide a basis for designing soil sampling plans in characterizing microbial community distribution and site-specific soil health management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent emergence or reemergence of various vector-borne diseases makes the knowledge of disease vectors' presence and distribution of paramount concern for protecting national human and animal health. While several studies have modeled Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus distributions in the past five years, studies at a large scale can miss the complexities that contribute to a species' distribution. Many localities in the United States have lacked or had sporadic surveillance conducted for these two species. To address these gaps in the current knowledge of Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus distributions in the United States, surveillance was focused on areas in Texas at the margins of their known ranges and in localities that had little or no surveillance conducted in the past. This information was used with a global database of occurrence records to create a predictive model of these two species' distributions in the United States. Additionally, the surveillance data from Texas was used to determine the influence of new data from the margins of a species' known range on predicted species' suitability maps. This information is critical in determining where to focus resources for the future and continued surveillance for these two species of medical concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]