Wildfire Impact and Forest and Pasture Land Uses on Soil Mesofauna Community in Badreh -Ilam Province

Wildfire is one of the most important destruction factors in forest and pastures. In forest and pasture ecosystems, soil mesofauna used as a bioindicator for environmental changes and management. The aim of this project was to address wildfire and land uses (forest and pasture) effects on soil mesofauna arthropods community in Badreh in Ilam province. For this purpose, soil sampling performed in two depths of soil surface (0-5 cm) and subsurface (5-20 cm) layers in wildfire occurrence and no occurrence of wildfire (control) conditions in 2015. In each land use, three plots (50 × 50 m) and five points from each plot was randomly taken from topsoil and subsoil depths (the total number of samples 60). Both forest and pasture land use found 3360 samples of different kinds of Phylum Arthropoda. The maximum soil mesofauna community belonged to pasture land use (control) by 30.67% while the minimum soil mesofauna community belonged to this land use (wildfire occurrence) by 14.35% as well as soil mites community abundance compared to insects community in forest was more than in pasture. According to results, Wildfire and soil depth affected significantly (α = 0.01) on Mesostigmata, Collembola, Oribatida and Staphylinidae abundance. Forest and pasture land use had no effect on Mesostigmata significantly, while this factor showed significantly (p < 0.01) on all mesofauna community. Generally, wildfire had negative effect on soil mesofauna abundance in different land uses.