The Effects of Forest Fires on Local Flora

Plants, trees, and other similar organisms constitute the community of a forest. These plants and trees stand together on a common soil ground, where they populate around each other to establish a full-fledged, bright green forest. Many factors can harm this forest community and annihilate the organisms that live there. One of the most devastating events is forest fires, which result in drastic environmental and biological changes. In the environmental aspect, the forest fire heats up the soil, causing chemical and physical changes of the soil composure. In the biological aspect, the fire destroys most of the organic life in the forest, as well as the microbiological life in the soil. Many scientists had studied the effects of such forest fires and their drastic changes to the ecosystem and the soil. Scientists had identified two distinct effects that occur after forest fires, which came to be known as the ash-bed effect and the rhizosphere effect. Both of these phenomenal effects have great influences on the growth of plants and the reemergence of the forest community that once thrived on the same soil.

Forest fires can be detrimental to the organic ecosystem, but what follows the fires is a phenomenal occurrence called the ash-bed effect. Scientists like Chambers and Attiwill defined this phenomenon as the enhanced growth of plants and other organic organisms on soil that have been heated by the forest fire (1994). A study was done on soil from a 250 years old Eucalyptus regnans forest in Victoria, Australia (Chambers & Attiwill, 1994). The study examined the effect of soil heating and other partial sterilization methods on the chemical, physical, and microbiological properties of the forest soil (Chambers & Attiwill, 1994). ...

... middle of paper ...

...d Microbiological Changes in Soil After Heating or Partial Sterilisation. Australian Journal of Botany 42, 739-749.

Humphreys FR, Lambert MJ (1965). An examination of a forest site which has exhibited the ash-bed effect. Australian Journal of Soil Research 3, 81-94.

Wolf DC, Dao TH, Scott HD, Lavy TL (1987). Influence of Sterilization Methods on Selected Soil Microbiological, Physical, and Chemical Properties. Journal of Environmental Quality 18, 39-44.

Katznelson H, Richardson LT (1943). The microflora of the rhizosphere of tomato plants in relation to soil sterilization. Canadian Journal of Research 21c, 249-255.

Cerligione LJ, Liberta AE, Anderson RC (1988). Effects of soil moisture and soil sterilization on vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization and growth of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). Canadian Journal of Botany 66, 757-761.