Laboratory analyses data set

Full description

Wildfire changes the nature and quantity of soil organic matter during the event and affects organic matter inputs after the event. Although extensive research has been conducted on the influence of wildfire on soil nutrient cycling in regards to plant nutrient limitation, less is known about the effects of wildfire on microbial nutrient limitation. In order to address this gap, soils were collected from adjacent woodland and pine forest sites that were unburnt or experienced low or high severity wildfire. These soils were incubated for 50 days, under optimal water content for soil respiration, after being amended with glucose, nitrogen solution, phosphorus solution, or a combination thereof. Amendment type only had a significant impact on cumulative respiration, microbial biomass phosphorus, and plant available nitrogen. The main result from this experiment is that microbial activity was primarily increased by C addition, then by either N or N and P addition, and that while burning increased N limitation when pooled by vegetation type from which the soil was collected, there was not a consistent response to nutrient addition due to fire severity. Therefore, although the response to nutrient addition was different for each soil, fire severity was not an important variable for microbial nutrient limitation in soils collected from these sites.