The hidden sink: Old-growth fungi as a carbon solution
Greenhouse gas removal cohort
Team: Rob Jackson, Kabir Peay
Forests, including their trees and soils, constitute the largest terrestrial carbon sink on Earth. This project aims to increase carbon storage in secondary forests by learning what enables old-growth forests to store large quantities of carbon in their soils. The team will identify fungal mutualisms in old-growth forests and develop soil microbiome transplant strategies to increase carbon storage in secondary forests.
The team's approach is to gather and analyze data from hundreds of old-growth forest relics in Sweden and across Scandinavia to compare tree biomass and soil carbon storage. They will characterize the fungal communities across forest ecosystems, correlate their data with high soil carbon sequestration, and develop a library of fungal communities that enhance soil carbon storage. During this one-year project, the team will learn which fungal communities to inoculate in secondary forests to increase their potential for soil carbon storage. This natural solution has the potential to remove greenhouse gases at scale while restoring forest biodiversity.
A new study finds old-growth forests in Sweden store far more carbon than the industrial tree plantations that are rapidly replacing them, with soil accounting for most of the difference. Protecting undisturbed areas could do more to mitigate climate change than previously thought.
Stanford biologist Kabir Peay wants to leverage the relationship between plants and the fungi that colonize their roots to help ecosystems weather climate change.