Saturday Science: Fungus Is Our Friend

No matter what you may think of mushrooms, they appear to have a role in moderating climate change due to too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Microscopic fungi that live in plants' roots play a major role in the storage and release of carbon from the soil into the atmosphere, according to a University of Texas at Austin researcher and his colleagues at Boston University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The role of these fungi is currently unaccounted for in global climate models.

Some types of symbiotic fungi can lead to 70 percent more carbon stored in the soil.

"Natural fluxes of carbon between the land and atmosphere are enormous and play a crucial role in regulating the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and, in turn, Earth's climate," said Colin Averill, lead author on the study and graduate student in the College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin. "This analysis clearly establishes that the different types of symbiotic fungi that colonize plant roots exert major control on the global carbon cycle, which has not been fully appreciated or demonstrated until now."

This is a photo of the fruiting body of an ectomycorrhizal fungus associated with the roots of a Hemlock tree in Harvard Forest. (Credit: Colin Averill)

This is a phenomenon that climate modelers apparently haven't taken into account. I see a bright future for mushroom farmers.