In the context of climate change,precipitation is predicted to become more intense at the global scale.Such change may alter soil microbial communities and the microbially mediated carbon and nitrogen dynamics.In this study,we experimentally repackaged precipitation patts during the growing season (from June to September) of 2012 in a semi-arid temperate steppe of the Xilin River Basin in Inner Mongolia of China,based on the 60-year growing season precipitation data.Specifically,a total amount of 240 mm simulated precipitation was assigned to experimental plots by taking the following treatments:(1) P6 (6 extreme precipitation events,near the 1st percentile);(2) P10 (10 extreme precipitation events,near the 5th percentile);(3) P16 (16 moderate precipitation events,near the 50th percentile);and (4) P24 (24 events,60-year average precipitation,near the 50th percentile).At the end of the growing season,we analyzed soil microbial community structure and biomass,bacterial abundance,fungal abundance and bacterial composition,by using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA),real-rime quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and 16S rRNA gene clone library methods.The extreme precipitation events did not change soil microbial community structure (represented by the ratio of PLFA concentration in fungi to PLFA concentration in bacteria,and the ratio of PLFA concentration in gram-positive bacterial biomass to PLFA concentration in gram-negative bacterial biomass).However,the extreme precipitation events significantly increased soil microbial activity (represented by soil microbial biomass nitrogen and soil bacterial 16S rRNA gene copy numbers).Soil fungal community showed no significant response to precipitation events.According to the redundancy analysis,both soil microbial biomass nitrogen and soil ammonium nitrogen (NH4-N) were found to be significant in shaping soil microbial community.Acidobacteria,Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria were the dominant phyla in soil bacterial composition,and responded differently to the extreme precipitation events.Based on the results,we concluded that the extreme precipitation events altered the overall soil microbial activity,but did not impact how the processes would occur,since soil microbial community structure remained unchanged.