Wildfire is an important disturbance factor in forest ecosystem structure and function. Soil microarthropods play vital roles in decomposition process in forest soil system where the mite comprise of more than 60% of all microarthropod abundance. In 2000 spring, there was a historical recorded wildfire occured in eastern mountaineous range devastating more than 20,000 ha by a single fire event. After categorizing the fire severities according to the vegetation recovery one year after the fire, we investigated the effect of fire severities on soil mite faunal composition as well as the recovery process. Five sites were selected as the representative to the fire severity and soil samples were collected seasonally. After extracting the soil microarthropods, only oribatid and gamasid mites were identified to species level. Community structural analysis were done.
Results/Conclusions
After 5-8 years of fire event, the soil mite abundance was only 30% in severely fired sites compared to the control site where no fire damage occured. The pattern of the species richness and abundance of either oribatid mites or gamasid mites were in the similar patterns. The main factor of the lower diversity in fired sites seemed the unavailability of the litter accumulation which again led the higher fluctuation of soil microenvironmental parameters such as temperature, humidity and also the space. Recently climate system is changing to favor the mounatain fire, details on this matter needs more attention.
