Location: Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory
Project Number: 3064-21600-001-023-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 4, 2025
End Date: Sep 30, 2026
Objective:
Understanding microbial communities post-fire in northern Great Plains Grasslands is critical to maintaining soil health and tailoring restoration efforts to maintain grassland productivity in grazing systems. The primary objective of this research is to compare pre-burn and post-burn microbial and fungal communities on a grassland with no history of recent burning using metagenomics. A secondary objective is to track post-burn recovery of microbial and fungal communities to determine both the impact of burning, and the rate on natural recovery post-burn.
Approach:
A historic grassland with over 100 years of fire exclusion history was burned in 2024. Pre-burn and post-burn samples were collected at different time intervals. for a total of 360 total samples. The cooperator will do DNA extraction iof these samples and coordinate with appropriate NDSU core facility to obtain 16S and ITS rDNA metabarcodes for soil bacteria and fungi; include library prep and DNA quantification with nanodrop (or similar); and infer functional profiles based on metabarcodes.