View article

Timber harvesting, with and without prescribed slash fire, and wild fire are common disturbances in pine forests of western North America. These disturbances can alter soil nitrogen (N) pools and N supply to colonizing vegetation, but their influence remains poorly understood for many forests. We investigated the effects of clear cut harvesting and fire on KCl extractable N pools, net N mineralization rates, phosphorus (P) fractions, seedling N uptake, and seedling growth in mineral soils sampled from a lodgepole pine forest in southern Wyoming. At a site where wild fire burned through a harvested stand of lodgepole pine and the adjacent intact forest, we analyzed mineral soils from the following four treatments: unburned clear cut, burnt clear cut, unburned forest, and burnt forest. Soils from unburned and burnt clear cut treatments had higher concentrations of KCl extractable N and higher net N mineralization rates …