Carbon Sequestration

The Nutrient-for-Carbon Exchange

Fungi are effectively merchants of carbon. In the soil, they give plants the water and nutrients they need, while the plants provide fungi with carbohydrates (i.e., carbon) from photosynthesis. Fungi can act like a second set of roots, extending the plant’s ability to draw in water and nutrients.

Mycorrhizal fungi, which encompass thousands of species, can form large, underground networks, connected by branching filaments called hyphae, threading through the soil in every direction. One type of this fungi, known as arbuscular mycorrhizal, attaches directly to the cell membranes of a plant’s root, facilitating a smooth delivery. Other microbes in the soil, like protozoa and nematodes, participate in this cycling, too, digesting fungi and bacteria to release their nutrients in a more available form to plants.

“The microbes engineered habitats around the plant roots that would be high in organic matter and make it more efficient for them to be able to obtain water and nutrients that they could then–in this carbon economy–essentially sell it to the plant,” says Kris Nichols, a leading researcher on soil microbiology. “It’s really an economic relationship.”

This relationship becomes especially interesting when business is booming—when the plants are delivering a lot of carbon into the soil that is used to build larger and larger fungal networks while distributing carbon across the soil profile. The carbon accumulates in the soil in many forms, from fungal cell walls to soil aggregates, or pellets of very alive soil that Nichols describes as “little microbial towns,” like economic hubs." - Civil Eats: Fung are Helping Farmers Unlock the Secrets of Soil

Soil Permeability

"Mycorrhizal fungi play a subtle but important role in shaping the hydraulic properties of soils through multiple direct and indirect mechanisms related to mycorrhizal-induced changes in soil structure and organic matter content. A majority of studies report that the presence and/or abundance of mycorrhizal mycelia correlates positively with soil water-retention capacity, hydraulic conductivity, and infiltration capacity, and negatively with soil water erodibility, although further research in this area is warranted. Direct mechanisms include mycorrhizal enhancement of soil aggregation and porosity, enhanced soil organic matter accumulation resulting from hyphal carbon inputs to soil and protection of labile soil organic matter pools inside aggregates, mycorrhizal inhibition of soil organic matter decomposition through competitive interactions with other soil microbial guilds, and mycorrhizal regulation of soil water repellency. At the ecosystem scale, indirect (plant-mediated) mechanisms may be even more important than direct mechanisms, given that mycorrhizal enhancement of plant growth and plant community diversity and productivity stimulates soil organic matter accumulation and soil aggregation, porosity, and water retention." - Mycorrhizal Mediation of Soil: Chapter 17 - Soil Water Retention and Availability as Influenced by Mycorrhizal Symbiosis: Consequences for Individual Plants, Communities, and Ecosystems

Feed Your Fungi

Don't Kill Your Fungi

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