Tiny Fungus Puts Up A Mighty Fight Against Climate Change
BY ANNIE-ROSE STRASSER ON JANUARY 9, 2014 AT 10:27 AM


A mushroom from an ectomycorrhizal fungus CREDIT: CREATIVE COMMONS


You might be a person who loves to eat a portabello sandwich or one who turns your nose at the sight of a salad bar button mushroom, but no matter your feelings on the gustatory nature of fungal fruit, you’ve got to respect fungi for one thing: Helping to fight climate change in a small but mighty way.

In a new study, scientists found that two certain types of fungi, known as ecto- and ericoid mycorrhizal (EEM) fungi, have the ability to drastically alter how much carbon gets sunk into soil or released into the air by as much as 70 percent. Since soil holds massive amounts of carbon — more than air and plants combined — this has a huge impact on the climate.

Here’s how it works: Nitrogen in soil is what feeds the little microorganisms that break down dead matter and release its carbon back into the atmosphere. But the EEM fungi (not to be confused with a mushroom — the mushroom is the fruit of a fungus) that live in the roots of plants steal some of that nitrogen out of the soil and turn it into nutrients for plants. In the process of stealing it, they’re ridding the soil of nitrogen. So when that plant eventually dies and returns to the soil to be broken down, in places where EEM fungi are present, it’s less quickly turned into carbon that goes back into the atmosphere.

This happens anywhere EEM fungi live — no matter the makeup of the soil, or what the climate of the location is.

The process might sound technical and small-scale, but its implications are significant...