AM Fungi Span 110 Quadrillion Kilometers, Moving 4 Billion Tonnes of CO2 a Year
Updated
Updated · The Economic Times · Jul 31
AM Fungi Span 110 Quadrillion Kilometers, Moving 4 Billion Tonnes of CO2 a Year
2 articles · Updated · The Economic Times · Jul 31
Summary
Earth’s soils contain about 110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal threads, according to a new international mapping effort led by researchers at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and SPUN.
Those networks receive plant-made organic carbon and transfer the equivalent of roughly 4 billion tonnes of CO2 into soils each year—about 11% of annual human-caused emissions in CO2e terms.
The maps also show a major weakness in managed land: fungal networks are about 50% less dense in croplands than in nearby wild ecosystems, a decline linked to tilling and overfertilization.
That loss matters beyond ecology because weaker fungal networks reduce soils’ ability to store carbon, cycle nutrients, support crop productivity and improve drought resilience.
Researchers say the atlas identifies fungal hotspots and large unsampled regions, offering a basis for conservation, restoration and climate-policy planning.