Soil rewetting, which stimulates nutrient release and triggers rapid metabolism in the soil microbiome, is fundamental to global nutrient cycling. CO2 emission from rewetting events is responsible for a significant fraction of all carbon release in dryland ecosystems. Intriguingly, stereotypical successional patterns are observed in microbial acrivity following rewetting events. In this project, we ask 1) how these low-dimensional patterns emerge from ecological and evolutionary self-organization of microbial communities and 2) whether we can leverage successional structure to predict nutrient flux through natural microbiomes.