Dear researchers,

I am in the initial stages of planning my master's thesis, in which I aim to investigate fungal, bacterial, and protist networks in soils from various land uses (intensive agriculture, conservation agriculture, grassland).

How should I approach the study design? As always, time and budget constraints are limiting factors, but my research has highlighted the importance of a substantial number of samples in microbial network analysis of soils.

My professors have provided access to 60 potential sites, all encompassing the three land uses. Would it be more advantageous to examine numerous diverse sites with different soil types (while reducing the number of technical replicates per field), or should I focus on just 2-4 sites (or even only one) and increase the number of technical replicates per field?