Fungi Could Help Solve Climate Change
A study published in Current Biology reveals that fungi play a significant role in combating climate change by absorbing over a third of the world’s annual fossil fuel emissions, making them a vital but overlooked aspect of carbon modeling, conservation, and restoration. Fungi, including mycorrhizal fungi that form symbiotic relationships with plants, act as a “carbon bank” by storing carbon dioxide from the air as plants provide them with sugars. However, human activities such as agriculture, mining, and industry disrupt these subsurface fungal networks, posing a threat to the planet’s health and efforts to mitigate global warming.
