The trajectories of vegetative structure and soil microbial function diverged across a fire chronosequence of the boreal forests in Northeast China

The role of boreal forest to ameliorate the effect of global climate change largely depends on the regeneration of postfire forests in northeast China. The postfire recovery of boreal forest can be evaluated by the aboveground vegetative structure and soil microbial function. In present study, a 50-year fire chronosequence was established, and the biomass of forbs, shrub and woody plant was separately weighted to assess their contribution to the whole community with the year since fire (YSF). Simultaneously, soil biophysical properties were measured for stands in different time period after fire. Soil microbial functions, i.e., growth efficiency (GE) and carbon use efficiency (CUE), were calculated basing on ecoenzymatic and soil nutrient stoichiometry. In terms of vegetative structure, forbs’ proportion decreased from 75% to 1.5%, but the proportion of woody plant increased from 0.04% to 70% across this fire chronosequence. In contrast, soil microbial function reached the highest value...