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Changes in the biomass and structure of soil microbial communities have the potential to impact ecosystems via interactions with plants and weathering minerals. Previous studies of forested long-term (1000s – 100,000s of years) chronosequences suggest that surface microbial communities change with soil age. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of long-term soil microbial community dynamics, especially for non-forested ecosystems and in subsurface soil horizons. We investigated soil chemistry, aboveground plant productivity, and soil microbial communities across a grassland chronosequence (65,000–226,000 yrs old) located near Santa Cruz, CA. Aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) initially increased...