![]() ![]() But to do that, they all need extra phosphorus. They all want to put out more leaves and fatten up their trunks. Crucially, those prices can change over time. But to know how much carbon forests can actually store, we also need to know how much they spend. Any big company planting trees or protecting forests to offset its carbon emissions is assuming that those trees are investing their carbon in extra leaves, in fatter trunks, whatever. These details are actually very relevant for humans. But you may have a little bit more left than the oak tree. At the end of the day, you each have some carbon left over to invest in growth. Say you both do your nutrient shopping-you buy some nitrogen, some phosphorus. You get some from your arbuscular fungi for about half off, compared with the oak tree next to you, who is trading with ectomycorrhizal fungi. cherries, um, birch.ĭuff: Now we’ll take you through the underground economy itself. Ash trees….ĭuff: Those trees, Jenny told me, partner with arbuscular fungi.ĭuff (tape): And then what about for ecto?īhatnagar: Oak, beech, pine, hemlock. To visualize how this works, it’s important to know that different trees tend to partner with different fungi.īhatnagar: Maples: red maples, sugar maples, Norway maples. Those prices impact how much carbon trees have to spend and how much they get to save. Ectomycorrhizae and arbuscular mycorrhizae specialize in getting different nutrients, and they trade those nutrients to trees at different price points. The other type, she tells me, is arbuscular mycorrhizae.ĭuff: And you said the arbuscular mycorrhizae, they are even smaller?īhatnagar: You can’t see them with the naked eye, because they grow inside the plant root, as opposed to around the outside.ĭuff: There’s a reason why this matters. They grow around the root cells on the outside.ĭuff: That’s Boston University biology professor Jenny Bhatnagar. Jenny Bhatnagar: “Ecto” means outside, and they don’t penetrate the root cells. And you can think of mycorrhizae as falling into two basic categories. The root fungi are called mycorrhizae: “myco” means fungi, and “rhizae,” means root. Then the fungi associated with tree roots scavenge for nutrients and trade them to trees in return for sugar, which comes from carbon. Some fungi help dead things decompose, releasing nutrients. It’s everywhere.ĭuff: This micro-economy beneath our feet is astounding. ĭuff (tape): It’s like little snowflakes! Silverstein: Yeah, the patterns they make are very cool. They’re these white threads that are, like, woven into the leaf. It’s almost like branches from a plant or like roots from a plant look like. ![]() And you see these very cool networks of mycelium running through it. Silverstein: So I’m holding a decomposing leaf where some mycelium has completely established in it. I mean this is growing on some twig….ĭuff: Right now I’m in Harvard Forest outside of Petersham, Mass., getting a tour of the forest floor from Michael Silverstein and Zoey Werbin, a couple of Boston University grad students who study microbial ecology. All the white.ĭuff: And that’s probably that wood rot fungi again? I was also like, I don’t get it, like, where are they? But that’s fungi. Silverstein: Yeah, yeah, it’s very visible. All that…ĭuff: That, wait, that’s like … it’s like, hairy… If you look at this leaf here you see that it’s kind of innervated with these threads. Michael Silverstein: Yeah, like, here? Like, if you look at this leaf here. Zoey Werbin: Maybe in, like, the wetter spots. Now we want to take you down into the tree roots, where this trading happens.Īnd then, all the way up to outer space, where scientists are figuring out how to map forests from satellites.įirst, to find out where this economy will go next, the devil is in the details. In our last episode, we talked about why this is humans’ fault. But now there’s too much carbon, and that “currency” is being devalued. In case you aren’t familiar, atmospheric carbon is a currency that plants use to “buy” nutrients from fungi in the soil. But there’s also this less intuitive consequence: under our feet, the economy responsible for the growth of trees and forests is experiencing inflation. Meg Duff: For Science, Quickly, I’m Meg Duff.Īs the world heats up, many of the consequences of burning fossil fuels are now painfully obvious. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |