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(2024)ThesisProlonged droughts and high temperatures throughout the 21st century have driven extreme fire risk weather around the world, resulting in widespread and extreme severity wildfires. In Australia, this was highlighted throughout the Black Summer fire season, which lasted a total of 8 months from July 2019 to April 2020. The fire season was and still is referred to as unprecedented and devastating, and for good reason. The fires killed people and wildlife, destroyed property and habitat, caused widespread atmospheric and aquatic pollution, destabilized and eroded soils, and left the government, scientists, and the public wondering how Australian ecosystems would recover. However, fire impacts, even of extreme severity fires, are never homogeneous, and fire interactions with Australian native ecosystems are complex, with many Australian species depending on fire for their survival. This PhD thesis provides a window into the complexities of how the 2019-20 fire season impacted people and the vegetation and soils in their surrounding environment. The first section of this thesis contains a qualitative assessment, i.e., surveys and interviews, of the public’s observations and perceptions of the 2019-20 fire season in New South Wales. Survey results showed that residents were motivated to take actions, including fire preparation and post-fire restoration efforts, because of the 2019-20 fires (Chapter 2), and public behaviours and their influence on government policy are known to influence fire outcomes. Furthermore, the 2019-20 fires increased perceived risk of fires on soil health (Chapter 2), yet few residents in the study were aware of the condition of their soils before or after the fire (Chapter 3). The work in Chapters 2 and 3 revealed a knowledge gap regarding the impacts of fire, and in particular, high severity fire on soil. To address this gap, the second section of this PhD thesis comprises a quantitative assessment of a high severity fire from the 2019-20 fire season and its impact on physicochemical and biological soil quality indicators of soils with different pre-fire management. Soil analyses showed that the high severity reached by fires unexpectedly reduced soil carbon and nitrogen levels (Chapter 4). Furthermore, an analysis of microbial communities showed fire reduced the abundance of symbiotic bacteria and fungi (Chapter 5) posing a risk to orchids and other threatened plant species on Kangaroo Island that depend on microbial plant symbionts. My research provides a rare empirical assessment of fire impacts on soils, particularly regarding high severity fire impacts on soil fungal and bacterial community composition and implications for post-fire soil microbial function. Furthermore, it highlights the limited knowledge but potential interest that the public has in understanding the importance of soils and the ecosystems services they provide. This work shows a need for more expansive soil monitoring after fire events such as the 2019-20 fire season, and I propose that engaging the public in soil monitoring efforts could address this need.