FIRE-NET: Coordinating research and education on fire-prone longleaf pine forests

This project supports a multi-institutional research and education network to examine the short- and long-term impacts of fire on soil microbial communities in longleaf pine ecosystems. The longleaf pine ecosystem was once widely distributed across the North American Coastal Plain and is now recognized as a threatened global biodiversity hotspot. Frequent prescribed fire is commonly used in restoration and conservation of long-leave pine ecosystems. However, there is a knowledge gap on how these fires impact the soil microbial communities that underlie a wide range of ecosystem processes like plant productivity and litter decomposition. The network brings together ecologists, land managers, conservationists, and education researchers for a systems approach study of fire ecology. The coordinated approach integrates multiple knowledge and data sources with cutting-edge tools. In addition to educational resources and student training, this project will contribute knowledge to the growing push to manage fire-prone ecosystems across the globe with prescribed burning. This FIRE NET project will address the impacts of frequent prescribed fire on soil microbiome structure and function, and the above-ground consequences of the bidirectional fire-soil relationship in the fire-prone longleaf pine ecosystem. The researchers will evaluate the long-term impact of fire on microbial communities; implement a distributed experiment to quantify short-term dynamics of vegetation, microbial communities, and litter decomposition rates after prescribed fire; characterize stakeholder perspectives on fire-soil relationships to advance understanding of fire as a social-ecological phenomenon; and develop pedagogical research on students’ understanding of fire through a new course-based undergraduate research experience. Together, these efforts will yield fundamental insights while also building research capacity for linking above- and below-ground dynamics in fire-prone ecosystems worldwide. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.