Fire effects on soil and plant functional traits in Italian Mediterranean woodlands

Within a Nationally funded National Interest Research Project (PRIN), named “Community Functional Structure effects on Mediterranean Ecosystem Functions. Assessing the relative role of woody community functional components and their interactions with ecological factors, including disturbance” (PRIN CFS-MedEF), a set of indicators has been proposed and tested to explore the functional pathways linking plant vascular biodiversity, climatic and disturbance factors (i.e., wildfire), and ecosystem functions involved in biogeochemical cycles such as net primary productivity and litter decomposition rate. Seldom were the extremely diverse and structurally complex Mediterranean forests studied. This complexity translates into a non-linear multivariate link between biodiversity, ecological factors and ecosystem functions. The methodological approach consists of testing in pairs of Mediterranean Quercus ilex and Q. suber forests in three regions (Latium, Calabria and Sardinia) the effects of climate, soil factors, and plant community functional structure on net primary productivity and litter decomposition rate. In detail, the functional community structure was calculated by the Community Weighted Mean and Functional Diversity indexes. Standard protocols to collect and collate multidisciplinary data are being applied to assess the combined effect of all these variables, and to build the best explanatory model for predictors of the ecosystem functions considered. The novelty of the project consists in carrying out a detailed and simultaneous assessment of aboveground and belowground ecosystem functional dynamics, which was never performed in Italy. The results should contribute to the current scientific debate on the mechanisms through which Mediterranean forests respond to fire disturbance, accounting also for environmental conditions, providing useful insights for managing these ecosystems in view of the changes in climate and disturbance regime that will affect the Mediterranean regions globally.