The role of a vast network of underground fungi can suck up roughly one-third of the Earth-warming carbon emissions that burning coal, oil and gas puts off each year. It’s an amount previously unknown and that potentially can be expanded, a team of researchers said Monday.
Mycorrhizal fungi are responsible for holding up to13 gigatons, or 36%, of yearly global fossil fuel CL00 emissions below ground. To get an idea of the significance, that percentage is more carbon than China emits each year. China, the U.S. and India are the globe’s top polluters. It was already widely believed that mycorrhizal fungi could store carbon, as the fungi forms symbiotic relationships with almost all land plants and transports carbon, converted into sugars and fats by the plant, into soil. But until now the true extent of just how much carbon the fungi were storing wasn’t known.
The findings, published in Current Biology, revealed that an estimated 13.12 gigatons of CO2 is transferred from plants to the fungi annually, transforming the soil beneath our feet to a massive carbon pool and the most effective carbon capture storage unit in the world.