The study only included live arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, Stewart said, and did not include dead fungal networks, which help store carbon and add total biomass, and the networks’ impact on ecosystems. Research on dead mushroom webs is still under investigation.
The study also found where these networks are most threatened. The density of the fungal network in cultivated areas is about half that in wild ecosystems. Meanwhile, wild grassland ecosystems support about 40 percent of the world’s arbuscular mycorrhizal biomass. Still, those grasslands are among the least protected ecosystems on Earth, and they are being converted to cropland four times faster than forests, posing a potential threat to these networks and their benefits for plant life and carbon storage.
SPUN has a previous study found 90 percent of fungal communities all over the world they are defenselessand many ecosystems such as the deserts of the American Southwest, little studied.
According to the researchers, what exactly determines the loss of mycorrhizal fungi and the consequences of this decline need to be further investigated, so the SPUN team will present to policymakers at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP31 the importance of networks and the role they can play in protecting ecosystems.
Corentin Bisot, AMOLF biophysicist and co-author of the study, said a deeper understanding of mycorrhizal fungi at the ground level is important.
“We’re still far from fully understanding if you have a lawn in your neighborhood and you want to increase (increase) microbes and fungi,” Bisot said. “We don’t have the toolbox to do that.”
Stewart said this study is only the first map. Like the first Spanish maps of California—which presented the state as an island, he said—new discoveries about the density of mushroom networks around the world will increase the public’s understanding of them.
This article originally appeared there Domestic Climate Newsis a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
