Fungal Networks Are a Crucial Global Carbon Pool

Se habían realizado muchos estudios excelentes sobre los flujos de carbono en los hongos micorrícicos, pero hasta este estudio nadie había armonizado los datos.

Hemos descubierto que 13.000 millones de toneladas de carbono circulan anualmente a través de las redes de hongos.

Our goal was to synthesize all the data currently out there to try and better understand the carbon cycling.

Mycorrhizal mycelium act as a global carbon pool.

Hace tiempo que sabemos que el carbono fluye de las plantas a los hongos micorrícicos. Es una de las piezas centrales de este tipo de simbiosis planta-hongo. Pero hasta ahora no disponíamos de una buena estimación global de ese flujo de carbono. Ha habido algunos cálculos aproximados y estudios a pequeña escala, pero las cifras variaban mucho. Con esta revisión, nuestro objetivo era sintetizar todos los datos disponibles en la actualidad para intentar comprender mejor este componente del ciclo del carbono que pasa desapercibido.

We know that mycorrhizal fungi are holding carbon. Plants photosynthesize using sunlight and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert them into energy. During that process, the plants fix carbon – turning it from its gaseous form into organic carbon compounds. The plants then use this carbon to build their structures. Flowers, leaves, stems – those are all made from organic carbon compounds.

We looked primarily at three different types of mycorrhizal fungi – arbuscular, ectomycorrhizal, and ericoid, and were able to find that collectively, these three groups of fungi have 13.12 billion tons of carbon dioxide allocated to them every year.

To put this number in perspective: 13.12 billion tons of CO2 is about 36% of global fossil fuel emissions last year. China is by far the biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses – its annual emissions in 2021 were 12.47 billion tons. The U.S. emitted 4.75 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2021 – mycorrhizal fungi take up nearly three times that each year.

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