Trees use fungi in a number of ways, from breaking down organic materials for the trees to absorb nutrients to enabling a form of “communication”. Fungi form a network underground and a report in Nature has brought together millions of points of observation data to map the “Wood Wide Web”and understand this underground ecosystem.
Using millions of direct observations of trees and their symbiotic associations on the ground, the researchers could build models from the bottom up to visualise these fungal networks for the first time.
Prof Thomas Crowther, one of the authors of the report, told the BBC, "It's the first time that we've been able to understand the world beneath our feet, but at a global scale."
"Just like an MRI scan of the brain helps us to understand how the brain works, this global map of the fungi beneath the soil helps us to understand how global ecosystems work," said Prof Crowther."What we find is that certain types of microorganisms live in certain parts of the world, and by understanding that we can figure out how to restore different types of ecosystems and also how the climate is changing."
These fungi lock CO2 up in the soil so understanding the relationships between the tree species and the particular fungi they are asociated with will make a contribution to containing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.