Long-Term Effects of Fire on Forest Soils
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2012) | Viewed by 84239
Special Issue Editor
Interests: biogeochemical cycling in natural systems; effects of regional and global phenomena (atmospheric pollution, increased carbon dioxide and climate change) and localized influences (such as harvesting, fire, fertilization) on biochemical cycling, primarily in forest ecosystems; soil-soil solution chemical interactions; factors affecting organic carbon accumulation and loss in soils; nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus transformations in soils
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
There have been many studies and some excellent reviews of the effects of fire on soils. In most cases, these papers and reviews have focused on the immediate effects of fire on soil chemical, biological, and physical properties, and in general these effects are very pronounced. As is the case with many ecosystem perturbations, however, information on longer term effects is more sparse, mostly because few studies are funded for a sufficient length of time to investigate such changes.
Longer term effects of a wildfire could be a result of the immediate and direct effects of burning and the associated carbon and nitrogen losses, ash incorporation, or the indirect effects of charcoal and post-fire vegetation (especially nitrogen-fixing vegetation) along with the lingering effects of burning and ash that occurred immediately after the fire. Longer term effects of repeated prescribed fires could have all of the above as well as the cumulative effects of immediate soil responses. This special issue of Forests will address the longer-term effects of fire from both an observational and theoretical perspective.
Prof. Dr. Dale W. Johnson
Guest Editor
Keywords
- prescribed fire
- wild fire
- soil
- chemistry
- biology
- vegetation
- charcoal