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This study profiled soils over a land degradation gradient to obtain formulae as integrative measures for describing the gradient as a result of deforestation in Thailand. We applied antibiotic resistance most-probable-number profiling to the soil bacterial communities, and then described the gradient. Soil samples were collected on the gradient represented by dry evergreen forest (the original vegetation), dry deciduous forest (moderately disturbed) and bare ground (the most degraded) in February (dry season), March (shortly after temporal precipitation) and June (rainy season) 2001. In the period of this study, the degradation was consistently shown as soil conditions like sandy texture, high bulk density, lower pH, high exchangeable acidity, poor mineral and organic nutrients and dryness. Soil fertility index and soil evaluation factor, as the integrative measures of the intensity of land degradation, were described by scores on the first or the second principal component derived from the soil bacterial community profiles for each sampling time (R>0.457, p0.501, p
