By Mary Kate McCoy
June 13, 2023
Fungi: Our new climate allies?
3 min
Until now, fungi have been a blind spot in carbon modeling and conservation efforts. This study is the first to quantify the amount of carbon that plants pull out of the atmosphere and subsequently send to certain types of fungi known as mycorrhizal fungi.
“The potential for these fungi to keep climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere and in the soil is huge — and may play a bigger role in the carbon cycle than we anticipated,” said Heidi Hawkins, the study’s lead author and a scientist with Conservation South Africa, an affiliate of Conservation International.
Mycorrhizal fungi form extensive networks, exchanging soil nutrients for carbon from the plant.
Hawkins said these findings, published in the journal Current Biology, could spur conservation efforts to pay closer attention to what's happening underground.
“In conservation, fungi have, understandably, received a fraction of the attention of forest restoration,” she said. “But these fungi could be part of the crucial fight to curb climate change.”
While these findings are encouraging, Hawkins noted that much about fungi’s ability to store carbon remains unclear — including how long that carbon remains buried below ground. Both living and dead fungal matter in the soil is made up of carbon. However, like plants and animals, fungi respire, resulting in the loss of carbon back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
What these findings do make clear is how essential soil is to carbon sequestration — and the role mycorrhizal fungi play in keeping it healthy, acting as a well-known defense against soil loss and certain plant diseases.
“Land degradation cripples our ability to fight climate change and biodiversity collapse,” Hawkins said. “If we lose the fungal networks in our soil, we also lose whatever carbon they store and the critical nutrient source that supports the ecosystems we depend on.”
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