projects
firefungi
Understanding fire severity impacts on soil mycorrhizalcommunities and their consequences for forest recovery
Spain, as other countries worldwide, is experiencing an increase in extremely severe wildfires partly fuelled by climate change. Increases in fire severity can have devastating impacts on forest including extensive tree mortality, soil erosion and lack of post-fire regeneration. As a result, fire-prone forests, which sustainability rely on their capacity to recover after fire, are now at risk of shifting to lower density forests or non-forest states with lower productivity and carbon sequestration capacity. Identifying the mechanisms that hinder post-fire forest regeneration is therefore essential to ensure the sustainability of our forests.
Despite soil mycorrhizal fungi can be essential for plant establishment and growth, the role of mycorrhizal associations in mediating the outcomes of post-fire forest recovery is largely uncertain. Mycorrhizal fungi can supply nutrients, reduce water loss and increase host plants resistance to heavy metals and pathogens. Furthermore, they can connect multiple hosts through common mycorrhizal networks that serve as an exchange channel for nutrients and water among plants. These networks can be particularly critical for plant establishment. Soil mycorrhizal fungi can be impacted by the high soil temperatures and erosion processes associates to high-severity fires. To what extent severe fires alter the mycorrhizal communities and whether that may be an underlying factor driving the impaired post-fire vegetation regeneration is unknown.
This proposal aims is to understand the impacts that high-severity fires have on the mycorrhizal communities and the cascading consequences on post-fire regeneration. The project will also determine whether restoration of soil mycorrhizal communities could be a solution to increase the success of revegetation efforts. The project will focus on Pinus pinaster forests, as they are among the most fireprone and most vulnerable to increases in fire severity.
Four specific objectives will be addressed:
1. Effects of high-severity fire on mycorrhizal abundance and community composition. Though a descriptive field study we will compare the abundance, diversity and composition of mycorrhizal communities across a gradient of fire severity and erosion risk.
2. Effects of high-severity fire on the common mycorrhizal network connectivity. Using isotopic tracing we will asses the impact that experimental fires of varying severity have on the plant-to-plant nutrient transfer
through of the CMN.
3. Effects of fire-driven changes in soil biotic and abiotic properties on plant regeneration. In an experimental glasshouse study with sterilized soils and live field inocula from across a fire severity gradient we will unravel how fire-induced changes in soil biotic and abiotic properties affect tree regeneration.
4. Restoring the mycorrhizal communities to increase revegetation success. In collaboration with land managers and forest industry stakeholders we will conduct a inoculation nursery and field trial to evaluate the
potential of restoring mycorrhizal communities to increase revegetation success
TIEMPO DE SETAS
It’s mushroom time: The impacts of climate change on the soil fungal communities of mountainous National Parks
Soil fungi are an integral component of the biodiversity harbored and managed by the National Parks. Central to mycotourism, an activity of great socio-economic and cultural relevance in the National Parks, soil fungi play a key role in the functioning of forest ecosystems, underpinning forest dynamics, carbon sequestration and cycling of nutrients, and being a source of food for fauna. Despite the great ecological, economical and social importance of soil fungi, how climate change will affect fungal communities and the ecosystem services they provide is still largely unknown.
This proposal aims to predict the impact of climate change on soil fungal communities and sporocarps production in mountainous National Parks. This project will pursue three specific objectives:
1) Quantify the impact of climate on the diversity and composition of soil fungal communities using metagenomics and climatic gradients in the Sierra Nevada, Sierra Guadarrama and Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Parks.
2) Evaluate the direct and indirect effect of climate on the sporocarp production using long-term data series from permanent monitoring networks in six different locations in the Iberian Peninsula.
3) Estimate the change in the structure of fungal communities and the production of carpophores of the three National Parks under different climate change scenarios using predictive models and simulations.
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The results of this project will revert directly to the studied National Parks, contributing to the conservation and management of their mycological resources, and will be easily transferable to the rest of the Network of National Parks.
MYCOPERCH
The role of perch trees in facilitating post-fire soil mycorrhizal fungal recolonization
Severe fires have devastating effects for soil biota, reducing its abundance and diversity, modifying community composition and with it, altering the functions they underpin. In particular, severe fire impacts on soil mycorrhizal fungi can have cascading negative consequences for ecosystem recovery, as most plants depend on these symbiotic organisms for their nutrition. Furthermore, mycorrhizal networks connecting multiple plant host can be particularly critical for plant establishment, as they serve as an exchange channel for nutrients and water among plants.
In the last decades numerous studies on post-fire management have shown the benefits of retaining surviving trees in fostering ecosystem recovery, promoting soil and nutrient retention, providing food and habitat for animals and foresting plant recolonization.
It is likely that these trees could also serve as a biodiversity refugia for soil mycorrhizal fungi harbored in their roots. However, the capacity of these remaining perch trees to promote the recolonization of mycorrhizal fungi after severe fires has not yet been investigated, despite the cascading consequences for post-fire vegetation establishment.
The proposal aims to provide evidence of the role of retained living perch trees in facilitating post-fire soil mycorrhizal fungi recolonization and the potential benefits it has for the recovery of soil functioning and vegetation recruitment. Specifically, it will test the hypothesis that
after high severity fires, where extreme temperatures have killed virtually all top soil biota, the living perch trees can act as a source of mycorrhizal fungal inoculum from where the soil mycorrhizal communities and their functionalities can be restored
The project will address three specific objectives:
1) to determine the capacity of living perch trees to preserve soil mycorrhizal communities and promote mycorrhizal recolonization of surrounding burnt soils;
2) to evaluate to what extent mycorrhizal recolonization is positively correlated with the restoration of soil functions; and
3) to assess the covariation between post-fire mycorrhizal recolonization and vegetation recovery. To that end we will use a descriptive field study on wildfire areas burnt at three different times (<1 year, 3-5 years and >10 years ago), where soil and vegetation at increasing distance from selected perch trees will be sampled, thus capturing the spaciotemporal dynamics of mycorrhizal recolonization.
firestorm
Ecological Restoration of Iberian Forest ecosystems affected by wildfires: post-fire evaluation and management proposals in the context of climate change
Forest ecosystems play fundamental roles in sustaining multifunctionality, ie. the ability to simultaneously provide multiple ecosystem functions, such as nutrient cycling, carbon stocks, water regulation, decomposition, and wood production. Wildfires can sustaintaily alter forest multifunctionality as it affects the structure, and community composition of vegetation and soils. In this context, post-fire management is a crucial element aiming to preserve and recovery forest ecosystems functions and biodiversity to pre-fire levels in the short and long term after wildfires.
The actions to be adopted to restore the hydrological response and ecosystems properties to pre-fire conditions in burned forests are several and of different nature and experiences are needed to identify the most effective strategy, which should be tailored to site and wildfire characteristics.
The main objectives of this project are :
1) To evaluate the effects of fire and post-fire emergence stabilization measures including log erosion barriers, contour-felled log debris , straw mulching and non-action after wildfires on ecosystem structure (e.g. plant diversity, flammability), ecosystem properties (e.g, soil properties) and multiple ecosystem functions (nutrient cycling, climate regulation, waste decomposition, symbiosis, wood production and water regulation) in the short-term (up to two years after wildfires) and long-term (more than ten years after wildfires), and across a climatic gradient along the Iberian peninsula (from humid to semiarid to Mediterranean climates) under the current climate conditions. A nearby unaffected wildfire area, chosen as the reference system, provided baseline values of forest structure, properties, and general indicators of forest functions in unburned forest.
2) To develop a suitable Decision Support System (DSS) for the implementation of post-fire emergence stabilization actions. This DSS is expected to synthesize the most innovative and current results in these actions, as well as the specific peculiarities in effectiveness within the gradient of the study sites of our project.