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Disentangling Effects of Time Since Fire, Overstory Composition and Organic Layer Thickness on Nutrient Availability in Canadian Boreal Forest

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Abstract

Wildfire is the primary abiotic disturbance in the boreal forest, and its long-term absence can lead to large changes in ecosystem properties, including the availability and cycling of nutrients. These effects are, however, often confounded with the effects of successional changes in vegetation toward nutrient-conservative species. We studied a system of boreal forested lake islands in eastern Canada, where time since last fire ranged from 50 to 1500 years, and where the relative abundance of the most nutrient-conservative tree species, black spruce, was largely independent of time since last fire. This allowed us to disentangle the effects of time since fire and the dominant vegetation on ecosystem properties, including nutrient stocks and concentrations. Effects of time since fire independent of vegetation composition mostly involved an increase in the thickness of the organic layer and in nitrogen concentration in both soil and leaves. Domination by black spruce had strong negative effects on nutrient concentrations and was associated with a shift toward more fungi and Gram-positive bacteria in the soil microbial community. Path modeling showed that phosphorus concentration was inversely related to organic layer thickness, which was in turn related to both time since fire and black spruce abundance, while nitrogen was more directly related to time since fire and the composition of the overstory. We conclude that discriminating between the effects of vegetation and time since fire is necessary for better understanding and predicting the long-term changes that occur in forest nutrient availability and ecosystem properties.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financed by Wallenberg Scholars award to DAW, and an NSERC discovery grant to YB. We thank all field assistants that made it possible to collect all this data, as well as the Ministère du Développement durable, de l’Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques du Québec for granting access to protected islands.

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Author notes

  1. All authors have contributed to the conception and refinement of the original study. XC, YB, DP and DW have participated to the fieldwork. The laboratories of DP and DW have performed soils and microbial analyses. XC, MC and DW have performed or contributed to the data analyzes. XC was the main writer of the paper, but all authors contributed significant improvements and additions to the original drafts.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901-83, Umeå, Sweden

    Xavier Cavard, Marie-Charlotte Nilsson & David A. Wardle

  2. NSERC-UQAT-UQAM Industrial Chair in Sustainable Forest Management, Forest Research Institute, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 445 Boulevard de l’Université, Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, J9X 4E5, Canada

    Xavier Cavard & Yves Bergeron

  3. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Laurentian Forestry Centre, 1055 du P.E.P.S., Stn. Sainte-Foy, P.O. Box 10380, Quebec, Quebec, G1V 4C7, Canada

    David Paré

  4. Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    David A. Wardle

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  1. Xavier Cavard
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  2. Yves Bergeron
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  4. Marie-Charlotte Nilsson
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Correspondence to Xavier Cavard.

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Cavard, X., Bergeron, Y., Paré, D. et al. Disentangling Effects of Time Since Fire, Overstory Composition and Organic Layer Thickness on Nutrient Availability in Canadian Boreal Forest. Ecosystems 22, 33–48 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-018-0251-3

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