Soil Recovery After Fire: Texture and Porosity Shape Microbial Functions

This file contains the original data underlying the article “Soil Recovery After Fire: Texture and Porosity Shape Microbial Functions.” We tested the hypothesis that soil texture and porosity control microbial survival and the speed of functional recovery after wildfire‑level heating. Intact surface samples from four Chilean soils (arid, semi‑arid, Mediterranean, temperate) were heated for 20 min at 300, 600 or 900 °C, cooled under sterile conditions and incubated 48 h; unheated soils served as controls. Four independent cores were analysed per soil × temperature.

The Excel workbook provides: (i) soil‑organic‑matter loss and thermal‑load estimates, (ii) kinetic parameters of β‑glucosidase, urease, peroxidase and phosphatase (V max, K m, V max / K m, Q 10), (iii) microbial‑biomass C, N, P, (iv) concentrations of H₂O₂, •OH and O₂•⁻, (v) relative abundances of 18 bacterial genera (16S rRNA; raw reads in ENA ERP122329) and (vi) principal‑component scores summarising the multivariate response. Column names, units and methods are explained in a README sheet; the companion “Scripts” folder contains R code for figure reproduction and the 1‑D heat‑conduction model.

Key findings shown by these data are: clay‑rich, porous soils retained up to 0.68 % SOM and 50–90 % of enzyme efficiency at 900 °C, whereas sandy soils lost almost all SOM (≤ 0.08 %) and suffered > 80 % declines in V max / K m and microbial biomass; H₂O₂ peaked at 3.5 µmol g⁻¹ in semi‑arid soil, indicating strong oxidative stress; thermotolerant genera such as Thermus and Bacillus dominated early recolonisation; PCA separates sandy from clayey soils along a gradient of SOM, biomass and fine particles.

Researchers can reuse the dataset to calibrate soil‑heating models, compare enzyme thermodynamics across climates or include the measurements in meta‑analyses of fire effects on soil biology. Released under CC‑BY 4.0; cite as: Merino C. et al. (2025) Soil Recovery After Fire – Supporting Data, Mendeley Data, V1, DOI 10.17632/XXXXX.Y.