Experimentally determined traits shape bacterial community composition one and five years following wildfire.

Wildfires represent major ecological disturbances, burning 2-3% of Earth's terrestrial area each year with sometimes drastic effects above- and belowground. Soil bacteria offer an ideal, yet understudied system within which to explore fundamental principles of fire ecology. To understand how wildfires restructure soil bacterial communities and alter their functioning, we sought to translate aboveground fire ecology to belowground systems by determining which microbial traits are important post-fire and whether changes in bacterial communities affect carbon cycling. We employed an uncommon approach to assigning bacterial traits, by first running three laboratory experiments to directly determine which microbes survive fires, grow quickly post-fire and/or thrive in the post-fire environment, while tracking CO2 emissions. We then quantified the abundance of taxa assigned to each trait in a large field dataset of soils one and five years after wildfires in the boreal forest of northern Canada. We found that fast-growing bacteria rapidly dominate post-fire soils but return to pre-burn relative abundances by five years post-fire. Although both fire survival and affinity for the post-fire environment were statistically significant predictors of post-fire community composition, neither are particularly influential. Our results from the incubation trials indicate that soil carbon fluxes post-wildfire are not likely limited by microbial communities, suggesting strong functional resilience. From these findings, we offer a traits-based framework of bacterial responses to wildfire.

Death from hunger or thirst? Phloem death, rather than xylem hydraulic failure, as a driver of fire-induced conifer mortality.

Disruption of photosynthesis and carbon transport due to damage to the tree crown and stem cambial cells, respectively, can cause tree mortality. It has recently been proposed that fire-induced dysfunction of xylem plays an important role in tree mortality. Here, we simultaneously tested the impact of a lethal fire dose on nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) and xylem hydraulics in Pinus ponderosa saplings. Saplings were burned with a known lethal fire dose. Nonstructural carbohydrates were assessed in needles, main stems, roots and whole plants, and xylem hydraulic conductivity was measured in the main stems up to 29 d postfire. Photosynthesis and whole plant NSCs declined postfire. Additionally, all burned saplings showed 100% phloem/cambium necrosis, and roots of burned saplings had reduced NSCs compared to unburned and defoliated saplings. We further show that, contrary to patterns observed with NSCs, water transport was unchanged by fire and there was no evidence of xylem deformation in saplings that experienced a lethal dose of heat from fire. We conclude that phloem and cambium mortality, and not hydraulic failure, were probably the causes of death in these saplings. These findings advance our understanding of the physiological response to fire-induced injuries in conifer trees.

Tree crown injury from wildland fires: causes, measurement and ecological and physiological consequences.

The dead foliage of scorched crowns is one of the most conspicuous signatures of wildland fires. Globally, crown scorch from fires in savannas, woodlands and forests causes tree stress and death across diverse taxa. The term crown scorch, however, is inconsistently and ambiguously defined in the literature, causing confusion and conflicting interpretation of results. Furthermore, the underlying mechanisms causing foliage death from fire are poorly understood. The consequences of crown scorch - alterations in physiological, biogeochemical and ecological processes and ecosystem recovery pathways - remain largely unexamined. Most research on the topic assumes the mechanism of leaf and bud death is exposure to lethal air temperatures, with few direct measurements of lethal heating thresholds. Notable information gaps include how energy transfer injures and kills leaves and buds, how nutrients, carbohydrates, and hormones respond, and what physiological consequences lead to mortality. We clarify definitions to encourage use of unified terminology for foliage and bud necrosis resulting from fire. We review the current understanding of the physical mechanisms driving foliar injury, discuss the physiological responses, and explore novel ecological consequences of crown injury from fire. From these elements, we propose research needs for the increasingly interdisciplinary study of fire effects.

Vegetation effects on impulsive events in the acoustic signature of fires.

Acoustic impulse events have long been used as diagnostics for discrete phenomena in the natural world, including the detection of meteor impacts and volcanic eruptions. Wildland fires display an array of such acoustic impulse events in the form of crackling noises. Exploratory research into the properties of these impulse events revealed information regarding the specific properties of plant material. Unique acoustic frequency bands in the upper end of the sonic spectrum correlated to changes in vegetation properties. The signature of acoustic impulse events as they relate to plant species and plant water stress, were investigated in controlled laboratory combustion experiments. Correlation in the frequency range of 6.0-15.0 kHz was found for both species and water stress, indicating the possibility that a digital filter may be capable of identifying vegetation properties during wildland fire events.

The Science of Firescapes: Achieving Fire-Resilient Communities.

Wildland fire management has reached a crossroads. Current perspectives are not capable of answering interdisciplinary adaptation and mitigation challenges posed by increases in wildfire risk to human populations and the need to reintegrate fire as a vital landscape process. Fire science has been, and continues to be, performed in isolated "silos," including institutions (e.g., agencies versus universities), organizational structures (e.g., federal agency mandates versus local and state procedures for responding to fire), and research foci (e.g., physical science, natural science, and social science). These silos tend to promote research, management, and policy that focus only on targeted aspects of the "wicked" wildfire problem. In this article, we provide guiding principles to bridge diverse fire science efforts to advance an integrated agenda of wildfire research that can help overcome disciplinary silos and provide insight on how to build fire-resilient communities.