Roots and Associated Fungi Drive Long-Term Carbon Sequestration in Boreal Forest

Forest Fungi Boreal forest is one of the world's major biomes, dominating the subarctic northern latitudes of Europe, Asia, and America. The soils of boreal forest function as a net sink in the global carbon cycle and, hitherto, it has been thought that organic matter in this sink primarily acc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Clemmensen, K. E., Bahr, A., Ovaskainen, O., Dahlberg, A., Ekblad, A., Wallander, H., Stenlid, J., Finlay, R. D., Wardle, D. A., Lindahl, B. D.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2013
Subjects:
Subarctic
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1231923
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1231923
Description
Summary:Forest Fungi Boreal forest is one of the world's major biomes, dominating the subarctic northern latitudes of Europe, Asia, and America. The soils of boreal forest function as a net sink in the global carbon cycle and, hitherto, it has been thought that organic matter in this sink primarily accumulates in the form of plant remains. Clemmensen et al. (p. 1615 see the Perspective by Treseder and Holden ) now show that most of the stored carbon in boreal forested islands in Sweden is in fact derived from mycorrhizal mycelium rather than from plant litter. Biochemical and sequencing studies show that carbon sequestration is regulated by functional and phylogenetic shifts in the mycorrhizal fungal community. The results will need to be explicitly considered in models of the role of the boreal forest in the global carbon cycle.

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