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Vegetation type and fire severity mediate short-term post fire soil microbial responses

Plant and Soil volume 484, pages 155–170 (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

Background

Wildfire severity mediates key dynamics, such as nutrient pulses, that regulate the recovery of ecosystem functioning. Large shifts in vegetation communities associated with plant invasions are often coupled with changes in soil communities; thus, it’s critical to understand how fire severity may interact with vegetation type and soil communities to mediate ecosystem recovery.

Methods

Following a 2017 wildfire in southern California, soils from areas dominated by native coastal sage scrub or exotic annual grasses that experienced a low or high severity fire event were analyzed for nutrient concentrations and two proxies for ecosystem function—microbial respiration and enzymatic activity potentials over the first-year post-fire.

Aims

We predicted that increasing fire severity would positively correlate with soil nutrient concentrations. Thus, higher severity burned soil would experience a greater downregulation of enzyme activity as potential microbial nutrient limitation was alleviated, a relationship that would be stronger in shrub dominated soil.

Results

We observed a strong soil nitrogen (N) pulse post-fire, which was greatest in shrub dominated soil; however, dominant vegetation had a variable effect on microbial responses. Enzyme activities were downregulated in CSS soil, but the grass dominated soil response was inconsistent. After 1 year, soil N remained elevated in burned soil, suggesting that basal soil N concentrations were altered.

Conclusions

Persistent, residual soil N concentrations are of particular concern in high fire risk ecosystems, which will likely experience increasing fire frequency associated with environmental change; thus, encouraging the regrowth of opportunistic vegetation in subsequent growing seasons will be key to minimize long-term changes to these ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Miguel Solis, Sameer S. Saroa, Soren Weber, Rene Stewart for assistance in the field. We would also like to thank Clarissa Rodriquez and Stuart Schwab for providing feedback on this manuscript. We thank Ken Ketizer at California State Parks for access to the site.

Funding

This work was supported by Chapman University Schmid College of Science and Technology and the University of California at Riverside.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Schmid College of Science and Technology, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA

    Cassandra Zalman, Emily Hanna, Jessica Rush & Katina Boise

  2. Department of Botany and Plant Science, University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Loralee Larios

  3. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Bolder, CO, USA

    Jessica Rush

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  1. Cassandra Zalman
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  2. Emily Hanna
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Contributions

CZ and LL designed the study and experimental design; CZ, EH, JR, KB, LL collected the samples, CZ, EH, JR, KB ran analyses, CZ and LL analyzed data and prepared figures, CZ and LL wrote the manuscript. EH, JR, and KB provided edits to the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Cassandra Zalman.

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Zalman, C., Hanna, E., Rush, J. et al. Vegetation type and fire severity mediate short-term post fire soil microbial responses. Plant Soil 484, 155–170 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-022-05776-9

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Keywords

  • Enzyme assay
  • Coastal sage scrub
  • Exotic grasses
  • Soil respiration potentials