Fire-driven disruptions of global soil biochemical relationships

12 páginas.- 5 figuras.- 66 referencias.- The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56598-z

Fires alter the stability of organic matter and promote soil erosion which threatens the fundamental coupling of soil biogeochemical cycles. Yet, how soil biogeochemistry and its environmental drivers respond to fire remain virtually unknown globally. Here, we integrate experimental observations and random forest model, and reveal significant divergence in the responses of soil biogeochemical attributes to fire, including soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) contents worldwide. Fire generally decreases soil C, has non-significant impacts on total N, while it increases the contents of inorganic N and P, with some effects persisting for decades. The impacts of fire are most strongly negative in cold climates, conifer forests, and under wildfires with high intensity and frequency. Our work provides evidence that fire decouples soil biogeochemistry globally and helps to identify high-priority ecosystems where critical components of soil biogeochemistry are especially unbalanced by fire, which is fundamental for the management of ecosystems in a world subjected to more severe, recurrent, and further-reaching wildfires.

G.Y.Z. acknowledges the supports from Ramón y Cajal grant (RYC2022-035226-I) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the NextGenerationEU program of the European Union (MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033y el FSE+), and AYUDAS DE EXCELENCIA RYC-MAX 2023 project from Spanish National Research Council. N.E acknowledge support by iDiv ([German Research Foundation, DFG]–FZT 118, 202548816), and the DFG (Ei 862/29-1; Ei 862/31-1). The Jena Experiment is funded by the DFG (FOR 5000). M.D.-B. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for the I + D + i project PID2020-115813RA-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. M.D.-B. is also supported by a project of the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) and the Consejería de Transformación Económica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades of the Junta de Andalucía (FEDER Andalucía 2014-2020 Objetivo temático “01 - Refuerzo de la investigación, el desarrollo tecnológico y la innovación”) associated with the research project P20_00879 (ANDABIOMA). M.B. is supported by a Ramón y Cajal grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science (RYC2021-031797-I). X.H.Z. is supported by National key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFA0608403). D.R. is supported by the MSCA postdoctoral fellowship from Horizon Europe programme (MSCA-PF-2021-101064192-FUNVINE).

Peer reviewed