Logging has legacy effects on the structure of soil fungal communities several decades after cessation in Western Cascade forest stands

Logging is one of the most pervasive disturbances to forests. Logging not only affects tree cover, but also disrupts belowground soil communities that are essential for forest ecosystems. Fungi are especially vulnerable to logging-associated disturbances due their formation of multicellular bodies known as mycelium that ramify through their substrate, and their reliance upon plant hosts, alive or dead depending on the species, as their source of carbon. Fungal communities play critical roles in the functioning of forest ecosystems, including structuring plant communities, driving nutrient fluxes, influencing forest productivity, and sequestering carbon. To evaluate the consequences of logging legacies on fungal composition, we sequenced fungi from soils in clearcut, selectively logged, and old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest. We separately sampled soil (Oi and Oe) and litter because the litter layer is often ignored but contains a substantial amount of fungal biomass. We also compared belowground communities to aboveground fruiting body composition. We addressed the following questions: 1) how do soil and litter fungal communities vary between forest stands with different logging histories? 2) what proportion of fungi are found both and belowground within the forest? 3) how do fungal communities in the litter layer differ from those in the soil?