Soil transfers to disturbed forests

To test whether soil transfers can mitigate disturbance-mediated impacts on ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) communities, we transferred soils containing fungal inoculum collected from conspecific late-successional forests into stands disturbed by wildfire, mountain pine beetle outbreak, clear-cut logging, or salvage-logging. Afterward, lodgepole pine seeds were sown to measure germination, establishment, and growth of seedlings, and to characterize root-associated and soil EMF communities by sequencing the ITS1 rDNA region.