Natural regeneration processes in beech forests after disturbance

Forests are estimated to contain large C stocks and contribute largely to global C storage, and thus represent critical components in the global C cycle. Forest harvesting and natural disturbances represent dramatic events in the development of an ecosystem, that can turn forest soils into temporary C source rather than a C sink, although it remains unclear how long this effect lasts. Furthermore, forest management changes soil microbial biodiversity and affects various groups of soil microbes and the processes that they mediate disproportionately. This bilateral project is built upon the complementary expertise of the researchers from Slovenia and the Czech Republic and uses the existing experimental settings in Slovenia. It aims to explore the effects of forest stand disturbances on biodiversity and ecosystem processes involving soil microbes, including primary production, decomposition, nutrient cycling and soil chemistry. In addition, we will track the resilience of soil microorganisms and the regeneration of forest to estimate the recovery rate after forest disturbances. This will not only contribute to the quantification of the disturbances impact, but also substantially increase our understanding of the functioning of the forest soil microbiome. The research will be performed in silver fir-beech forests covering high Karst areas of Slovenia. The main objective of this project is to define the roles of mycorrhizal fungi, saprotrophic fungi and bacteria in forest soils in the process of natural regeneration after cutting or natural disturbance (e.g. windthrow). The specific aims are to compare the effects of forest disturbances on gross ecosystem properties and processes, to describe microbial community development after this, and to identify how functional guilds of microbes and microbe-mediated ecosystem processes in forest soils respond. The results should help to aid the understanding of effects of forest management as well as natural disturbances.