NAMA Webinar: Repeated Fires, Changing Communities: Fungal Recovery in California’s Reburned Mediterranean Shrublands
Wildfires are a natural part of California’s Mediterranean shrublands, historically occurring every 30–60 years, but what happens when fires return more frequently? While we often focus on how plants and animals recover after wildfires, an indispensable community is also recovering beneath our feet: soil fungi!
We’ll discuss how fungi respond to repeated wildfires in Southern California’s chaparral ecosystems. Drawing on field research, we’ll explore how fungal diversity and community composition change in soils that have experienced a single fire versus multiple fires within a short period.
This talk is intended for everyone, from mushroom enthusiasts and naturalists to students, land managers, and researchers. Attendees will walk away understanding why soil fungi are important for ecosystem recovery after wildfire, which fungi tend to thrive after fire and which are more sensitive to disturbance, how repeated fires affect fungal diversity and community composition compared with a single fire, and what these changes can tell us about the recovery of chaparral ecosystems as wildfires become more frequent.
Monday, December 7
5pm PT | 6pm MT | 7pm CT | 8pm ET
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