Wildfires are a natural component of forest ecosystem. These fires are a major cause of significant perturbations in the forest habitat due to temperature extremes and drought conditions particularly in summer. Wildfires occur frequently during summer in the subtropical Chir pine forests of Murree, Pakistan. These fires influence soil characteristics as well as tree-species growth and survival. The present study was thus conducted to investigate soil characteristics of wildfire-affected and non-affected areas. Four sites were selected based on wildfire incidents in the study area. Soil samples were collected from the fire-affected and adjacent non-affected areas. The collected soil samples were analyzed for physical and chemical characteristics using appropriate methods. The study showed that bulk density, moisture content, electrical conductivity, and soil nitrogen and soil carbon content declined in the burnt soil. However, soil pH, and phosphorus and potassium contents were higher in the burnt soils than those in the non-burnt soils. Generally, low intensity forest fire (surface fire) is an important component of forest ecosystem and it enhances natural regeneration as well as soil fertility. It is suggested that government forest departments should take into account burn severity while developing hazard reduction and restoration strategies of wildfire affected areas.

Industrial wastewater contains a variety of substances such as organic carbon, salts and heavy metals, which along with arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb) and nickel (Ni) are known to be highly toxic even in very low concentrations. This study was carried out to test the impact of industrial effluent from the Industrial Estate Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, on four local grass species of the Pothohar region, i.e., Panicum maximum (Mombasa grass), Cenchrus ciliaris (Dhaman grass), Cynodon dactylon (Khabbal grass) and Chloris gayana (Rhodes grass). These grasses were grown in tap water (T0), industrial effluent (T1), and in industrial effluent-tap water ratio (50:50; T2). The concentrations of As, Cd, Pb, and Ni accumulated by these grasses were appraised with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). All four grasses differed significantly in terms of their accumulation of different types of metal elements in the shoot and root organs. The analysis of industrial effluent, and root and shoot biomass samples of all four grasses did not have high amounts of heavy metals with reference to the levels of the metals documented by WHO. It is generally recommended that the effluents from the Industrial Estate Islamabad can be used with some caution for growing forage grasses including the four species tested in this study.