SUMMARYNew research published in Science estimates that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks beneath the world’s soils stretch about 110 quadrillion kilometers, nearly a billion times the Earth-sun distance if laid end to end. Led by the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, the study combined literature reviews, global soil samples, machine learning, and lab testing to map where these underground webs are densest. The fungi trade nutrients with plant roots and help store about 1 billion tons of carbon underground each year.
Hidden underground around the world lie 110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks—webs of ultra-thin threads that, if connected in a single line, would stretch almost a billion times the distance between the Earth and the sun, according to new research published in Science on Thursday.
These fungal communities form intimate relationships with the roots of plants, which they provide with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for carbon, 1 billion tons of which the networks sequester underground annually, previous research has found. If the fungal network wasn’t storing it, that carbon would be warming the atmosphere.
But those networks have never been mapped globally until now. The new study led by Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, or SPUN, an organization founded to map mycorrhizal fungi networks, used a combination of literature review, soil samples from around the globe, machine learning and laboratory testing to estimate the distribution and mass of these systems and map where they are densest.