By its symbiotic bonds, tree life is inseparably linked with bacterial and fungal organisms. Hidden in the soil environment, these diverse processes linked to root systems provide the necessary nutrients to the trees in exchange for carbon. A new study mapping the global presence of basic symbiotic forms (ectomycorrhiza, endomycorrhiza and nitrogen-fixing bacteria) was prepared by a broad international research team led by researchers from Stanford University.
The study was conditional on the use of a vast database of source data – it included information on 31 million trees of a total of 1.1 million forest inventory sites across five forested continents. This data enabled the researchers to analyze the links and associations of climate-related symbioses, soil environment characteristics, topography, and species composition of vegetation that had not been able to be verified on a global scale before.
The study data also include hundreds of forest plots of the CzechTerra Landscape Inventory project, covering the entire Czech Republic. “I am very pleased – CzechTerra is a proof of a truly functional long-term cooperation of colleagues from IFER – Institute of Forest Ecosystem Research and CzechGlobe – Global Change Research Institute CAS,“ says doc. Emil Cienciala, the co-author of the published study.
Steidinger B.S., Crowther T.W., Liang J., Van Nuland M.E., Werner G.D.A., Reich P.B., Nabuurs G., de-Miguel S., Zhou M., Picard N., Herault B., Zhao X., Zhang C., Routh D., GFBI consortium including, Cienciala E., Peay K.G. (2019) Climatic controls of decomposition drive the global biogeography of forest-tree symbioses.
Nature 569, 404-408
Note:
The external survey of the CzechTerra project (CZT1 and CZT2) was carried out within two earlier joint projects of IFER and GCRI: R&D ME (SP/ 2d1/93/071 – CZT1 2008/2009), promoter prof. Michal Marek, Director of CzechGlobe, and GACR (14-12262S – CZT2 2014/2015), promoter doc. Emil Cienciala, IFER.
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The woody species composition of the forest determines the type of mycorrhizal bonds
