This month, we look at research regarding mycorrhizal networks – underground communities of fungi that form symbiotic relationships with plants growing above ground – and their effect on carbon sequestration and plant health and resiliency.
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Can Soil Inoculation Accelerate Carbon Sequestration in Forests?
Newly popular field of soil microbiome restoration research offers hope.
When foresters first tried to plant non-native Pinus radiata in the southern hemisphere, the trees would not grow until someone thought to bring a handful of soil from the native environment. “They didn’t know it then, but they were reintroducing the spores of fungi that these trees need in order to establish,” Colin Averill, ecologist at The Crowther Lab, explains. “When we plant trees, we rarely ‘plant’ the soil microbiome. But if we do, we can really accelerate the process of restoration.”