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Date of Award
Spring 2025
Rights
Access restricted for 1 year to EWU users with an active EWU NetID
Date Available to Non-EWU Users
2026-06-12
Document Type
Thesis: EWU Only
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS) in Biology
Department
Biology
Abstract
Inland Pacific Northwest prairie is an endangered ecosystem that has been reduced by conversion to agriculture. There is growing interest in the role of soil microorganisms in prairie ecosystems, which may be crucial for restoration of the plant community through interspecies interactions within the rhizosphere. One method for improving soil microorganism community composition is compost tea: enriched liquid compost extract. Compost tea is used in regenerative agriculture to improve crop yields and protect against pathogens. While research has supported compost tea application in regenerative agriculture, it has not been widely studied in the context of ecosystem restoration. After beginning a field experiment on Eastern Washington University's prairie restoration site to investigate whether compost tea improves native plant establishment, most plots were burned by a wildfire started by a model rocket. This study now consists of (1) a greenhouse experiment investigating the effect of compost tea on the biomass of native prairie plants and (2) an analysis of post-fire recovery of the soil bacteria and nematode communities at the field site. In the greenhouse experiment, compost tea application did not affect the biomass of all plant species considered together, but Lupinus sericeus in particular experienced an increase in biomass due to compost tea. Compost tea also suppressed seed germination and reduced soil bacterial diversity. Compost tea had a similar impact on bacterial community composition regardless of whether it was boiled. In the field study, compost tea had no effect on bacteria or nematodes. The fire did not affect bacterial or nematode diversity, but it did have a small effect on their community compositions. Hill position and aspect were the major drivers of both bacterial and nematode community composition in the field, and these differences were not well explained by soil moisture or soil organic matter content. These results indicate avenues of further research into the circumstances in which it may be best to apply compost tea during a iv restoration effort. Research into the abiotic drivers of differences among soil microbial communities by location on the rolling hills of Inland Pacific Northwest prairie could further inform soil restoration efforts.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Hersey, April, "Bridging prairie restoration and regenerative agriculture with compost tea / the rocket incident: post-fire soil microbe recovery on the Eastern Washington University restoration site" (2025). EWU Masters Thesis Collection. 968.
https://dc.ewu.edu/theses/968
