Mushrooms could play a key role in solving the climate crisis

Toby Kiers is a professor of evolutionary biology at Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit whose analysis on fungi has led her to revelations about how nature itself can remedy the local weather disaster.

Kiers is trying past the astonishing range of mushrooms we see rising above floor to the hidden programs we overlook: fungal webs that unfold all through the soil and nourish the roots of timber and crops.

In her laboratory, streams of carbon molecules move throughout Kiers’s pc display screen just like the oily bubbles in a lava lamp. Lit up and magnified, the carbon is shifting by an infrastructure of gossamer tubes that make up huge underground networks of fungi. These programs comprise a 3rd of the residing biomass of soil, binding it collectively and sustaining a lot of life on Earth. Soils include about 75% of the planet’s terrestrial carbon and fungi play a crucial position. They’re “highly effective and underappreciated allies” within the quest to unravel local weather change, mentioned Kiers.