Georgia Seyfried
Oregon State University, OR·Ecology & Evolution
Fuel buildup and drier conditions are making wildfires more frequent across western forests. In dry forests, repeated fire often lowers soil fertility.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
wildfire
short-interval reburns
high-severity fire
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Characterize interactions among regenerating vegetation, soil fertility and microbial communities after single high-severity fires and short-interval reburns in wet western Cascade conifer forests, using field surveys.
- Reconstruct the timescale of soil recovery by comparing sites that burned at different times, combining field sampling and field manipulations.
- Measure the contribution of photodegradation, sunlight-driven breakdown of plant litter, to decomposition, and separate microbial community effects from soil property effects in laboratory experiments.
More about the research
It is unclear whether the same happens in wetter, more productive forests that historically burned rarely, such as the conifer forests of the western Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest. This project asks how soils recover after severe fire and after short-interval reburns, when a site burns again within a short time, and how plants, soils and microbes interact during that recovery.
Why it matters
As wildfires return more often to wet Pacific Northwest conifer forests, land managers need to know how quickly soils recover and whether reburns lower fertility. Predicting soil recovery trajectories could help managers decide where to focus post-fire forest regeneration, rehabilitation and restoration.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Gaurav Kandlikar
Louisiana State University, LA·Ecology & Evolution
Evaluate how long-term, frequent prescribed fire shapes the structure and function of soil microbial communities in longleaf pine ecosystems.
Shawn Fraver
University of Maine, ME·Earth & Environmental Science
Identify how methanogens (methane-producing microbes) and methanotrophs (methane-consuming microbes) in Howland Forest soils drive methane flux across moisture and other environmental gradients, using microbial community profiling.
Matthew Bowker
Northern Arizona University, AZ·Ecology & Evolution
Determine what controls the functional biodiversity of biological soil crusts at a global scale, through standardized surveys of biocrust composition run at many international sites.
The school
Oregon State University: 29 labs on PI Pages, $372M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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