Dataset Information

Effects of short-interval reburns in the boreal forest on soil bacterial communities compared to long-interval reburns.

ABSTRACT: Increasing fire frequency in some biomes is leading to fires burning in close succession, triggering rapid vegetation change and altering soil properties. We studied the effects of short-interval (SI) reburns on soil bacterial communities of the boreal forest of northwestern Canada using paired sites (n = 44). Both sites in each pair had burned in a recent fire; one site had burned within the previous 20 years before the recent fire (SI reburn) and the other had not. Paired sites were closely matched in prefire ecosite characteristics, prefire tree species composition, and stand structure. We hypothesized that there would be a significant effect of short vs. long fire-free intervals on community composition and that richness would not be consistently different between paired sites. We found that Blastococcus sp. was consistently enriched in SI reburns, indicating its role as a strongly 'pyrophilous' bacterium. Caballeronia sordidicola was consistently depleted in SI reburns. The depletion of this endophytic diazotroph raises questions about whether this is contributing to-or merely reflects-poor conifer seedling recolonization post-fire at SI reburns. While SI reburns had no significant effect on richness, dissimilarity between short- and long-interval pairs was significantly correlated with difference in soil pH, and there were small significant changes in overall community composition.

SUBMITTER: Woolet J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9303391 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of short-interval reburns in the boreal forest on soil bacterial communities compared to long-interval reburns.

Woolet Jamie J Whitman Ellen E Parisien Marc-André MA Thompson Dan K DK Flannigan Mike D MD Whitman Thea T

FEMS microbiology ecology 20220701 8

Increasing fire frequency in some biomes is leading to fires burning in close succession, triggering rapid vegetation change and altering soil properties. We studied the effects of short-interval (SI) reburns on soil bacterial communities of the boreal forest of northwestern Canada using paired sites (n = 44). Both sites in each pair had burned in a recent fire; one site had burned within the previous 20 years before the recent fire (SI reburn) and the other had not. Paired sites were closely ma ...[more]

PMID: 35671126

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Project description:The decline in forest ecological function caused by pure forest plantations planted in the Yangtze River basin is becoming increasingly serious. To investigate this problem, we selected the local low-efficiency weeping cypress plantations for forest gap transformation. Three forest gap sizes, specifically large, medium, and small gaps, were established, and the effects of gap sizes on soil bacterial community structure and diversity in winter and summer were studied compared to no gaps (CK; control). Compared to CK, forest gaps had a significant effect on soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil total nitrogen (TN), and the highest values of SOC and soil TN under two seasons occurred in large forest gaps. The interactions of forest gap sizes and seasons had significant effects on pH, SOC, TN, and alpha diversity indices, including Simpson, Chao1, and ACE indices. Compared to winter, forest gaps significantly increased the soil bacterial community diversity indices in summer. Forest gap sizes significantly affected the composition of the bacterial community, but the composition of the dominant bacteria at the phyla and genera levels was similar. Linear discriminant effect size (LEfSe) analysis showed that there were 32 indicator bacterial species in two seasons. Co-occurrence network analysis revealed that the relationship of the soil bacterial community at the phyla level was complex, and there was a significant positive correlation among bacterial species. Soil bulk density (BD) and soil moisture (SM) significantly affected the soil bacterial alpha diversity indices. The composition of the dominant bacteria at the phyla level was significantly affected by soil microbial carbon (MBC), whereas the composition of dominant bacteria at the genera level was affected by soil hydrolysable nitrogen (AN) and the carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio. In this study, compared to the other forest gaps, large forest gaps were more conducive to the accumulation of soil nutrients, thus improving the structure of the soil bacterial community. Importantly, changes in the soil bacterial community structure due to gap formation may have profound effects on soil biogeochemical processes in weeping cypress forest plantations.

Dataset Information

Effects of short-interval reburns in the boreal forest on soil bacterial communities compared to long-interval reburns.

Publications

Effects of short-interval reburns in the boreal forest on soil bacterial communities compared to long-interval reburns.

Similar Datasets

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