Abstract
In recent years, the investigation of fire disturbance of microbial communities has gained growing attention. However, how the bacterial community varies in response to different severities of fire at different soil depths is largely unknown. We utilized Illumina MiSeq sequencing to illustrate the changing patterns of the soil bacterial community following low-, moderate- and high-severity wildfire in the topsoil (0–10 cm) and subsoil (10–20 cm), 6 months after the fire. Acidobacteria, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Verrucomicrobia and Chloroflexi were the dominant phyla among all samples. Bacterial alpha diversity (i.e. Shannon and Simpson indices) in the topsoil was significantly higher than that in the subsoil after a high-severity wildfire. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis and permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) revealed significant differences in the bacterial community structure between the two soil layers. Soil pH, ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N) and total nitrogen were the main factors in shaping the bacterial community structure, of which soil pH was the most robust in both soil layers. Our study reveals that wildfire results in short-term changes in soil bacterial community. However, a long-term monitoring of microbial variation after burning is also essential.
Highlights
Fire is a common environmental perturbation in forest ecosystems[1]
According to Hamman et al.[18], microbial biomass did not change after burning, microbial community structure was different in areas with differing fire severity
The lowest values for soil organic matter (OM), total nitrogen (TN), Ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N) and nitrate nitrogen (NO3−-N) were found in the topsoil and subsoil of the areas affected by high-severity wildfire
Summary
Fire is a common environmental perturbation in forest ecosystems[1]. There are around 12,670 fires per year on average in China, and the burned area was about 604,126 ha during each of the last six decades[2]. Soil microbes play an important role in ecosystem recovery They can be affected by fire, either as a direct result of heating or as an indirect effect of changes in soil physicochemical properties[14]. According to Hamman et al.[18], microbial biomass did not change after burning, microbial community structure was different in areas with differing fire severity Microbes differ in their sensitivity to fire-induced heat[19]. Wildfires are often extremely heterogeneous, depending on fuel distribution and wind direction and strength, which results in large patches of unburned vegetation and areas experiencing differing fire severity within the boundaries of the fire. We examined the effects of different fire severities (high, moderate, low and unburned) on soil bacteria at two soil depths (0–10 cm topsoil and 10–20 cm subsoil) in a Pinus tabulaeformis forest in northern China. It is expected that the bacterial community in the topsoil will showed a higher diversity
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