Rapid recovery of soil bacterial communities after wildfire in a Chinese boreal forest

Xingjia Xiang; Yu Shi; Jian Yang; Jianjian Kong; Xiangui Lin; Huayong Zhang; Jun Zeng; Haiyan Chu

doi:10.1038/srep03829

Rapid recovery of soil bacterial communities after wildfire in a Chinese boreal forest

Xingjia Xiang, Yu Shi, Jian Yang, Jianjian Kong, Xiangui Lin, Huayong Zhang, Jun Zeng, Haiyan Chu

Forestry and Natural Resources

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

105 Scopus citations

Abstract

Fires affect hundreds of millions of hectares annually. Above-ground community composition and diversity after fire have been studied extensively, but effects of fire on soil bacterial communities remain largely unexamined despite the central role of bacteria in ecosystem recovery and functioning. We investigated responses of bacterial community to forest fire in the Greater Khingan Mountains, China, using tagged pyrosequencing. Fire altered soil bacterial community composition substantially and high-intensity fire significantly decreased bacterial diversity 1-year-after-burn site. Bacterial community composition and diversity returned to similar levels as observed in controls (no fire) after 11 years. The understory vegetation community typically takes 20-100 years to reach pre-fire states in boreal forest, so our results suggest that soil bacteria could recover much faster than plant communities. Finally, soil bacterial community composition significantly co-varied with soil pH, moisture content, NH₄⁺ content and carbon/nitrogen ratio (P < 0.05 in all cases) in wildfire-perturbed soils, suggesting that fire could indirectly affect bacterial communities by altering soil edaphic properties.

Original language	English
Article number	3829
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/srep03829
State	Published - Apr 1 2014

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China to H. Chu (41071167) and J. Yang (41071121) and the Hundred Talents Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences to H. Chu. We thank Zhihua Liu and Weili Liu for assistance in sampling. We also thank Jinbo Xiong for useful discussion.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Nature Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

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title = "Rapid recovery of soil bacterial communities after wildfire in a Chinese boreal forest",

abstract = "Fires affect hundreds of millions of hectares annually. Above-ground community composition and diversity after fire have been studied extensively, but effects of fire on soil bacterial communities remain largely unexamined despite the central role of bacteria in ecosystem recovery and functioning. We investigated responses of bacterial community to forest fire in the Greater Khingan Mountains, China, using tagged pyrosequencing. Fire altered soil bacterial community composition substantially and high-intensity fire significantly decreased bacterial diversity 1-year-after-burn site. Bacterial community composition and diversity returned to similar levels as observed in controls (no fire) after 11 years. The understory vegetation community typically takes 20-100 years to reach pre-fire states in boreal forest, so our results suggest that soil bacteria could recover much faster than plant communities. Finally, soil bacterial community composition significantly co-varied with soil pH, moisture content, NH4+ content and carbon/nitrogen ratio (P < 0.05 in all cases) in wildfire-perturbed soils, suggesting that fire could indirectly affect bacterial communities by altering soil edaphic properties.",

author = "Xingjia Xiang and Yu Shi and Jian Yang and Jianjian Kong and Xiangui Lin and Huayong Zhang and Jun Zeng and Haiyan Chu",

note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China to H. Chu (41071167) and J. Yang (41071121) and the Hundred Talents Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences to H. Chu. We thank Zhihua Liu and Weili Liu for assistance in sampling. We also thank Jinbo Xiong for useful discussion. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2014, Nature Publishing Group. All rights reserved.",

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AU - Zhang, Huayong

AU - Zeng, Jun

AU - Chu, Haiyan

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PY - 2014/4/1

Y1 - 2014/4/1

N2 - Fires affect hundreds of millions of hectares annually. Above-ground community composition and diversity after fire have been studied extensively, but effects of fire on soil bacterial communities remain largely unexamined despite the central role of bacteria in ecosystem recovery and functioning. We investigated responses of bacterial community to forest fire in the Greater Khingan Mountains, China, using tagged pyrosequencing. Fire altered soil bacterial community composition substantially and high-intensity fire significantly decreased bacterial diversity 1-year-after-burn site. Bacterial community composition and diversity returned to similar levels as observed in controls (no fire) after 11 years. The understory vegetation community typically takes 20-100 years to reach pre-fire states in boreal forest, so our results suggest that soil bacteria could recover much faster than plant communities. Finally, soil bacterial community composition significantly co-varied with soil pH, moisture content, NH4+ content and carbon/nitrogen ratio (P < 0.05 in all cases) in wildfire-perturbed soils, suggesting that fire could indirectly affect bacterial communities by altering soil edaphic properties.

AB - Fires affect hundreds of millions of hectares annually. Above-ground community composition and diversity after fire have been studied extensively, but effects of fire on soil bacterial communities remain largely unexamined despite the central role of bacteria in ecosystem recovery and functioning. We investigated responses of bacterial community to forest fire in the Greater Khingan Mountains, China, using tagged pyrosequencing. Fire altered soil bacterial community composition substantially and high-intensity fire significantly decreased bacterial diversity 1-year-after-burn site. Bacterial community composition and diversity returned to similar levels as observed in controls (no fire) after 11 years. The understory vegetation community typically takes 20-100 years to reach pre-fire states in boreal forest, so our results suggest that soil bacteria could recover much faster than plant communities. Finally, soil bacterial community composition significantly co-varied with soil pH, moisture content, NH4+ content and carbon/nitrogen ratio (P < 0.05 in all cases) in wildfire-perturbed soils, suggesting that fire could indirectly affect bacterial communities by altering soil edaphic properties.

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Rapid recovery of soil bacterial communities after wildfire in a Chinese boreal forest

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