{"id":6495,"date":"2021-12-03T18:49:57","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T18:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/uncategorized\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change"},"modified":"2021-12-03T19:23:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T19:23:36","slug":"scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change","title":{"rendered":"Scientists are mapping the world\u2019s underground fungi network to fight climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Gambia. <\/strong><\/span>Kiers is leading a team of scientists known as the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) to study networks of fungi across the world.<\/p>\n

The biologist says the overlooked organism sustains much of life on Earth by isolating carbon from plants, but through increasing land use changes, various types of fungi get destroyed.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve been a total global blind spot in conservation and climate agendas. They\u2019re this ancient life support system [and] they need to be mapped the same way that ocean currents and global vegetation are mapped. They\u2019re just too small to see with the naked eye. They\u2019re thinner than threads of cotton.<\/p>\n

But what they do is they form these living nutrient highways between plant roots and the soil. So if you wanted to be able to see underground, you would see these plant roots become colonized by the symbiotic fungi…. Plants feed carbon to these fungi in exchange for phosphorus and nitrogen that the fungi collect out in the soil.<\/p>\n

This is what we\u2019re doing in my lab right now…. We see these nutrient highways that are full of carbon and phosphorus and other kinds of nutrients. If you hold even a handful of soil in your hand, that\u2019s about 100 kilometres of fungal networks. So they\u2019re incredibly dense. Like 50 per cent of the living biomass in these soils is fungal network.<\/p>\n

When we talk about mapping, what we\u2019re talking about is actually understanding who is where. The biodiversity of these fungi. So we have to go out and take those samples and extract the DNA and look for these fungal networks and look for the biodiversity hotspots.<\/p>\n

These fungal networks are disappearing at an alarming rate. The destruction of the underground really accelerates climate change, biodiversity loss and interrupts all of our global nutrient cycles.<\/p>\n

You can think of fungal networks as kind of the coral reefs of the soil. They\u2019re the ecosystem engineers, but they\u2019re completely invisible to the naked eye. And so people haven\u2019t been focused on them as a conservation priority.<\/p>\n

This initiative, I think it signals sort of an emergence of a new underground climate movement. Networks are really threatened by agricultural expansion, by deforestation, by urbanization.<\/p>\n

Urbanization, in particular with layers of concrete, it\u2019s very hard for these fungal networks to survive. And so one of the things we\u2019re doing is advocating, for example, for a living roof \u2014 the green roofs \u2014 because surprisingly, these fungal networks, they actually can disperse by spores in the air. And so if we have things like living roofs that form these corridors, it can help fungal networks survive big urbanization centres.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s really compelling data suggesting that pesticides and fertilizers are really disrupting the symbiosis between plant roots and their fungal networks. And this is bad for agriculture because if you have an agricultural system with a healthy fungal network, it can keep the nutrients in the ecosystem. But as soon as the network is gone, you have leaching. [There is] about 50 per cent more leaching in the absence of a fungal network.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re saying to people is to try to switch our mentality about what it means to conserve \u2026 and not necessarily always focus on high-priority or high-profile plants and animals.<\/p>\n

Focus on things that we can\u2019t see as structures and flows. We\u2019re developing some of the first visuals of what these fungal networks look like when they\u2019re underground. And they look like nutrient rivers.<\/p>\n

They have very complex flows inside of them because … this carbon and phosphorus and nitrogen and all of the organelles of the fungi [are] moving through. And it\u2019s a giant pipe system, and you can actually watch the behaviour of these fungi as they navigate [the] landscape. Watching the flows inside of them really changes people\u2019s perspective about walking on top of them.<\/p>\n

A Guest Editorial<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Gambia<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Gambia. Kiers is leading a team of scientists known as the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) to study networks of fungi across the world. The biologist says the overlooked organism sustains much of life on Earth by isolating carbon from plants, but through increasing land use changes, various types of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":6494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,8],"tags":[2355,2361,136,260,3005],"class_list":["post-6495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-community","category-homepage-english","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-gambia","tag-climate-change","tag-gambia","tag-scientists"],"yoast_head":"\nScientists are mapping the world\u2019s underground fungi network to fight climate change - Gambia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kiers is leading a team of scientists known as the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) to study ne ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scientists are mapping the world\u2019s underground fungi network to fight climate change\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kiers is leading a team of scientists known as the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) to study ne ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gambia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-12-03T18:49:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-12-03T19:23:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/gambia\/sites\/19\/2021\/12\/img-61aa6e93212df.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"731\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"411\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Scientists are mapping the world\u2019s underground fungi network to fight climate change\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-12-03T18:49:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-12-03T19:23:36+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change\"},\"wordCount\":684,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/gambia\/sites\/19\/2021\/12\/img-61aa6e93212df.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Gambia\",\"Climate change\",\"Gambia\",\"Scientists\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"community\",\"homepage-english\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/scientists-are-mapping-the-worlds-underground-fungi-network-to-fight-climate-change\",\"name\":\"Scientists are mapping the world\u2019s underground fungi network to fight climate change - 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