Changes in soil fungal communities following logging and salvage logging disturbances decrease lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) seedling performance

• Author / Creator

  Beck, Jackson, L

• Disturbances are frequent events across the Canadian boreal forests and can affect both below and above ground ecosystem processes at various temporal and spatial scales. We have limited understanding of how changes in the below ground fungal communities affect above ground plant communities. Such understanding has become increasingly important in-light-of observed changes in frequency and severity of disturbances due to climate change. Thus, we investigated how soil inoculum collected from the four common disturbances (fire, mountain pine beetle outbreak, logging, and salvage logging) in lodgepole pine stands in Alberta affect pine seedling performance in the greenhouse. We asked, (1) whether fungal communities of lodgepole pine seedling roots change when seedlings were grown in pots inoculated with soil from one of the disturbed (fire, mountain pine beetle outbreak, logging, or salvage-logging) and paired control sites and (2) whether changes in fungal community composition have cascading impacts on seedling performance (below and above ground biomass, height, and survival). We found that the root fungal communities of logged and salvage-logged treatments differed from their paired controls while fire and beetle outbreak treatments did not. We also found significant variations on the root fungal communities among disturbance treatments. The most prominent difference was between burned and salvaged-logged sites. In addition, we found that these changes to the root associated fungal community resulted in decreased seedling performance both when comparing logging and salvage-logging treatments to their paired control sites and when comparing among all disturbance treatments (fire to salvage logging treatments). Our findings indicate that soil fungi may mediate negative impacts of anthropogenic disturbance (logging and salvage logging)on seedling growth. Additionally, these impacts may not be analogous to the soil fungi mediated response of seedlings following natural disturbances (wildfire and beetle outbreaks). Furthermore, seedlings inoculated with soil from salvage logged sites had reduced performance when compared to fire disturbed sites. Land managers should consider that salvage-logging may have negative indirect impacts on seedlings when planning salvage harvests. Additional work is needed to investigate the soil fungi mediated long-term impacts of salvage logging on the regeneration of seedlings.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Salvage logging
  • Soil fungi
  • Lodgepole pine
  • Compound disturbance

• Graduation date

  Spring 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-jktg-qc21

• License

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