Fire severity as a key determinant of aboveground and belowground biological community recovery in managed even-aged boreal forests

Changes in fire regime of boreal forests in response to climate warming are expected to impact post-fire recovery. However, quantitative data on how managed forests sustain and recover from recent fire disturbance are limited.  
Two years after a large wildfire in managed even-aged boreal forests in Sweden, we investigated how recovery of aboveground and belowground communities, i.e., understory vegetation and soil microbial and faunal communities, responded to variation in the severity of soil (i.e., consumption of soil organic matter) and canopy fires (i.e., tree mortality).
While fire overall enhanced diversity of understory vegetation through colonization of fire adapted plant species, it reduced the abundance and diversity of soil biota. We observed contrasting effects of tree- and soil-related fire severity on survival and recovery of understory vegetation and soil biological communities. Severe fires that killed overstory Pinus sylvestris promoted a successional stage dominated ..., ,