The study only included living arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, Stewart said, and did not include dead fungal networks, which also help store carbon and add to the network’s impact on total biomass and ecosystems. Research on dead fungus networks is still being explored.
The study also found where these networks are most at risk. Fungal network density in all croplands is about half that in wild ecosystems. Meanwhile, wild grassland ecosystems contain about 40 percent of the world’s arbuscular mycorrhizal biomass. Yet those grasslands are among Earth’s least conserved ecosystems, and they are being converted to agricultural land at a rate four times higher than forests, posing a potential threat to these networks and the benefits they bring to plant life and carbon storage.
Previous research from SPUN has found that 90 percent of fungal communities worldwide are vulnerable, and many ecosystems, such as the deserts of the American southwest, have not been studied.
The researchers said there is a need to find out what exactly is causing the loss of mycorrhizal fungi, and what the consequences of that decline are, which is why the SPUN team will be presenting to policymakers at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference-COP31 about the importance of the networks and their role in protecting ecosystems and sequestering carbon.
It is important to understand mycorrhizal fungi more deeply at the grassroots level, said Corentin Bissot, an AMOLF biophysicist and co-author of the study.
“We are still a long way from fully understanding that, if you have a meadow next to you, and you want to do that, how [increase] There are microorganisms and fungi,” Bissot said. “We don’t have the toolbox to do that for you.”
This study is just the first map, Stewart said. And just as the Spaniards created the first map of California — which presented the state as an island, he said, there will be new discoveries about the density of fungal networks around the world to increase the public’s understanding of them.
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
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