The Effects of Post-Wildfire Soil Microbial Communities on Coast Redwood Seed Germination
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Wildfires in California and the Western United States are increasing in size, frequency, and severity due to colonial fire suppression and climate change. As these catastrophic fires typically result in full-stand replacement, soil microbial communities, and specifically symbiotic fungi, may hold the key to understanding if and how these forests may recover. A high-profile megafire recently burned some of the last remaining old-growth coast redwood forests at the southern extent of their range. While fire is a naturally-occurring and well-studied phenomenon in these ecosystems, there is an important gap in our understanding of the microbial component of post-fire seedling germination dynamics. Germination is a critical stage of forest recovery after a fire, as trees race to access newly available resources including nutrients, water, and sunlight. Elucidating how post-fire microbial communities contribute to dynamics of seedling germination and therefore fire recovery will be critical in understanding and predicting post-fire tree recruitment. We germinated both coast redwood and Douglas fir (a co-dominant competitor species) seeds in live and sterile soil collected across a gradient of burn severities in Big Basin State Park to test the role of post-fire microbial communities on seedling germination. We found that regardless of burn severity or microbial treatment, the total percentage of seed germinated remained the same for both species with Douglas firs having a higher total percentage of germination than coast redwoods. However the rate of germination increased for coast redwoods in both burned soils and soils with live microbial communities. Douglas fir germination rates were also affected, increasing in live soil community and varying amongst burn severities. Our results suggest that symbiotic fungi and microbial communities as a whole play an important role in the rates of regeneration of multiple species in coast redwood forests after wildfire. Seed germination is often overlooked in greenhouse studies, and these results provide evidence that soil microbes and burn severity interact to influence early stage recruitment in coast redwood forests. This study contributes to our understanding of how wildfire may threaten the already shrinking range of coast redwoods and makes predictions about how soil microbes might affect the long-term trajectory of these forests in the wake of recent megafires.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | May 6, 2022; May 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Villa, Lydia |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Peay, Kabir |
| Thesis advisor | Fukami, Tadashi |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Biology |
Subjects
| Subject | Biology |
|---|---|
| Subject | Wildfire Ecology |
| Subject | Mycology |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Villa, L. and Peay, K. (2022). The Effects of Post-Wildfire Soil Microbial Communities on Coast Redwood Seed Germination. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/tx674cz2947
Collection
Undergraduate Theses, Department of Biology, 2021-2022
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- Contact
- lydiav@stanford.edu
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