ABSTRACT
Plant community composition, soil moisture, pH, and temperature, as well as the availability and quality of organic substrates and mineral nutrients, are key factors that control fungal communities and the processes they mediate (Keenan
et al., 1993; Visser and Parkinson, 1999). These factors can be significantly altered by forest management practices (Frazer et al., 1990; Keenan et al., 1993); thus, these changes are likely responsible for transformations in fungal communities following disturbances. In this chapter, we address three major guilds of fungi: mycorrhizal fungi, saprotrophs, and pathogens. These three groups potentially respond differently to forest management practices, due to their different trophic attributes. For example, we would expect that clear-cut logging would have a greater negative impact on the mycorrhizal fungi colonizing roots of trees than it would on saprotrophs because the former rely predominantly on living trees for their carbon supply (Haselwandter et al., 1990; Smith and Read, 1997).
