Afforestation
Trees and other vegetation suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, sequestering nearly a third of global carbon emissions. Reforestation can have many benefits beyond carbon removal, including providing habitat, enhancing soil fertility, controlling floods, and improving air and water quality.
Ways to enhance soil’s carbon uptake include using plant varieties that have deeper roots, agroforestry, adding bio-organic materials. The strategy is location-specific, depending on the soil type, land management practices, environmental conditions and other factors
Foundation of Forest Ecosystems lies in Biological Properties of Soil that support storing and transmitting organic matter, water, and nutrients. A fantastic array of organisms including Plant Roots, Microflora (bacteria, archaea, fungi, actinomycetes), Microfauna (nematodes, protozoa), Macrofauna (earthworms, soil arthropods, rodents) make the soil a lively place.
Under the soil in a forest there are these massive networks of mycelium – the mass of interwoven tubular filaments (hyphae) of fungi. This miles and miles of mycelium network acts as a web underground growing links between fungi and connecting the roots of different plants to each other. Trees are known to communicate and share nutrients with other trees and plants through the passages of mycelium network.
Vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza (VAM) is formed by the symbiotic association between certain phycomycetous fungi and angiosperm roots. The fungus colonizes the root cortex forming a mycelial network and characteristic vesicles (bladder-like structures) and arbuscules (branched finger-like hyphae).
The plant provides the fungus with photosynthetically derived carbohydrate, while the fungus supplies the plant roots with nutrients. They enhance the ability of plants to absorb phosphorus from soil, also increase the phyto-availability of micronutrients like copper, zinc, boron, molybdenum…
VAM enlarges root areas of host plants and improves its efficiency of water absorption. Fungal networks also boost their host plants’ immune systems.