Through laboratory simulation, the influence of cadmium on soil respiratory intensity and microbial community were studied by adding different concentrations of heavy metal cadmium. The results indicated that, the soil respiration had a signifi- cant weakening trend in the same culture days with increasing exogenous cadmium content; the soil respiration intensity was decreased obviously with the increase of culture time, especially after 14 d when the soil exogenous cadmium content was in the range of 0.5-3.0 mg/kg, while the soil respiration had not obvious variation over time when the exogenous cadmium content was in the range of 5.0-10.0 mg/kg. The soil microbial communities decreased significantly and were much lower than that of the control treatment in the same culture days with the increasing of soil exogenous cadmium content; the soil microbial community declined significantly with increasing of culture time for all exogenous cadmium treatments. The number of soil microbial communities in treatment with 10 mg/kg of exogenous cadmium were only 46.43%, 32.26%, 28.74%, 27.39% and 24.62% of that in control treatment on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th and 42rd of culture, respectively. It indicated that higher concen- tration of cadmium in dark brown soil had a significant inhibitory effect on soil mi- crobial growth.
