Wildfire reconfigures soil function linkages in a Chinese boreal larch forest
Jiang, M., Y. Zhang, M. Jiang, Y. Qian and J. Kong . 2026.
Abstract
Wildfires alter multiple soil functions in forest ecosystems, but how they reconfigure the
linkages between these functions is not fully understood. We evaluated the 1-year-postfire
and 11-year-postfire effects of wildfire on carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, fertility
maintenance, and erosion regulation, as well as their relationships, in a Chinese boreal larch
forest. We further identified the environmental drivers regulating these associations. One
year postfire, the soil fertility index transiently increased by 85%, whereas the carbon
sequestration and nutrient cycling declined by 58% and 54%, respectively. Principal
component analysis showed that wildfire decoupled the multivariate relationships between
four soil functions. While these functions were closely clustered in unburned controls, they
became dispersed one year postfire, indicating functional dissociation. After eleven years
of recovery, a partial reassembly occurred, but with a reconfigured functional structure
distinct from the pre-fire state. For the functional pairs, the impact of wildfire was limited to
shifting the relationship between the soil fertility and nutrient cycling from a non-significant
negative correlation to a significant positive correlation. Redundancy analysis showed
that the soil water content remained the primary environmental driver of soil functional
relationships before and after the fire, but its role reversed from negative in unburned
stands to positive during the postfire recovery, suggesting a shift toward water-mediated
functional coupling. Wildfires in boreal forests have far-reaching effects on soil ecosystems,
including impacts on the relationships between various soil functions. Our results indicate
that wildfire reconfigures the network of soil function linkages in boreal forests, with
implications for the recovery of boreal soil ecosystems.
Key Words
disturbance; burning; ecosystem functioning; soil ecosystem
