Wildfire effects on soil bacterial community and its potential functions in a permafrost region of Canada

New review paper by Zhou et al., 2020 indicated that wildfire significantly reshaped bacterial community composition and its potential functions in the surface soil layer, but did not shift those in the deep soil layer. The differences in bacterial community composition and its functional potentials between burned and unburned forests were primarily determined by abiotic variables such as the soil temperature, moisture and available soil nutrients. Overall, the study highlights bacterial fitness over a fire-induced environmental gradient in a continuous permafrost region, improving our understanding of temporal shifts in bacterial community compositions and their abilities to control post-fire C and N cycles.