Plants, trees, and other similar organisms make up the community of a forest. These plants and trees stand together on common ground, where they populate around each other to create a full-fledged bright green forest. Many factors can damage this forest community and destroy the organisms that live there. One of the most devastating events are forest fires, which cause drastic environmental and biological changes. From an environmental aspect, forest fires warm the soil, causing chemical and physical changes in the composition of the soil. Biologically, fire destroys most organic life in the forest, as well as microbiological life in the soil. Many scientists have studied the effects of such forest fires and their drastic changes on the ecosystem and soil. Scientists had identified two distinct effects occurring after forest fires, which became known as the ash bed effect and the rhizosphere effect. Both of these phenomenal effects have a major influence on plant growth and the reemergence of the forest community that once thrived on the same soil. Forest fires can be harmful to the organic ecosystem, but what follows the fires is a phenomenal event called ash. - bed effect. Scientists such as Chambers and Attiwill have defined this phenomenon as the increased growth of plants and other organic organisms on land heated by forest fires (1994). A study was conducted on the soil of a 250-year-old Eucalyptus regnans forest in Victoria, Australia (Chambers & Attiwill, 1994). The study examined the effect of soil warming and other partial sterilization methods on the chemical, physical, and microbiological properties of forest soil (Chambers & Attiwill, 1994). ...... middle of paper ......d Microbiological changes in soil after heating or partial sterilization. Australian Journal of Botany 42, 739-749.Humphreys FR, Lambert MJ (1965). An examination of a forestry site showing the ash bed effect. Australian Journal of Soil Research 3, 81-94.Wolf DC, Dao TH, Scott HD, Lavy TL (1987). Influence of sterilization methods on selected microbiological, physical and chemical properties of soil. Journal of Environmental Quality 18, 39-44.Katznelson H, Richardson LT (1943). The microflora of the rhizosphere of tomato plants in relation to soil sterilization. Canadian Journal of Research 21c, 249-255. Cerligione LJ, Liberta AE, Anderson RC (1988). Effects of soil moisture and soil sterilization on vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization and growth of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). Canadian Journal of Botany 66, 757-761.