The effects of wildfire, salvage logging, and post-fire N-fixation on the nutrient budgets of a Sierran forest

The effects of fire, post-fire salvage logging, and revegetation on nutrient budgets were estimated for a site in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains that burned in a wildfire in 1981. Approximately two decades after the fire, the shrub (former fire) ecosystem contained less C and more N than the adjacent forest ecosystem. Reconstruction of pre-fire nutrient budgets suggested that most C was exported in biomass during salvage logging and will not be recovered until forest vegetation occupies the site again. Salvage logging may have resulted in longer-term C sequestration in wood products than would have occurred had the logs been left in the field to decay, however. Reconstructed budgets suggested that most N was lost via volatilization during the fire rather than in post-fire salvage logging (assuming that foliage and 0 horizons were cornbusted). Comparisons of the pre-fire and present day N budgets also suggested that the lost N was rapidly replenished in 0 horizons and mineral soils, probably due to N-fixation by snowbush (Ceanothus velutinus Dougl.), the dominant shrub on the former fire site. There were no significant differences in ecosystem P, K, or S contents and no consistent, significant differences in soil extractable P or S between the shrub and forested plots. Exchangeable K+, Ca2+, and Mg2+ were consistently and significantly greater in shrub than in adjacent forested soils, however, and the differences were much larger than could be accounted for by estimated ash inputs. In the case of Ca, even the combustion of all aboveground organic matter could not account for more than a fraction of the difference in exchangeable pools. We speculate that the apparent large increased in soil and ecosystem Ca content resulted from either the release of Ca from non-exchangeable forms in the soil or the rapid uptake and recycling of Ca by post-fire vegetation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.