Is it necessary to know what types of microbes are present in a system in order to understand and predict ecosystem processes? This is a fundamental, yet unanswered, question. This project will address hypotheses regarding the relationship between community assembly processes, environmental parameters and ecosystem functioning following a disturbance. Soil microbial community structure and function will be tracked in soils at various times after forest fires. Phylogenetic and genomic approaches will be employed to explore the factors controlling how microbial communities develop, and the relative roles of different controls in structuring microbial communities. This work will also focus on describing the temporal and spatial dynamics of the well-documented changes in nitrogen cycling that are observed following wildfires. This research is expected to build a better understanding of the contributions of microbial community structuring to these important soil processes.
This study will focus on how soil communities recover from burning at a time when fire frequency and severity are escalating across the American West. The project will also facilitate the development and refinement of new bioinformatics approaches to analyze the large data sets required to study the dynamics of complex microbial communities. Broader impacts include the training of graduate students and a post-doctoral scholar, and the development of a course to integrate undergraduates directly into the planned research. Additionally, outreach will be conducted at a local high school with a high proportion of at-risk students .
