With just one day of digging, gophers help restore life to the land near Mount St Helens after the 1980 eruption.
Gophers working near the fence in 1982. Photo: Mike Allen/UCR
The record strong eruption of Mount St Helens, USA, in 1980 with large amounts of lava and ash turned the surrounding landscape into desolation. The land certainly needs a lot of time to recover. However, a group of scientists then came up with a way to help speed up this process: Put gophers to “work” for a day. After about 40 years, the results were published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes, IFL Science reported on November 11.
While the soil below may still be rich in bacteria and fungi, the top layers of soil have been destroyed by eruptions and lava flows. “With the exception of a few grasses, most plant roots cannot take in all the nutrients and water they need on their own. Fungi transport these to the plants and exchange them for the carbon they need to grow,” said Michael Allen, co-author. study author, a microbiologist at the University of California Riverside (UCR), explains.
“Gophers are often considered pests, but we think they help transport old soil to the surface and that’s where recovery happens,” Allen added.
Scientists introduced local gophers to Mount St Helens about two years after the eruption. They were placed in enclosed experimental areas and spent a day digging, bringing beneficial bacteria and fungi to the surface.
Even though the gopher’s work only lasts 24 hours, the impact is still significant. After six years, more than 40,000 trees thrived where they dug, while the surrounding land remained largely desolate. After more than 40 years, the research team discovered that they have left behind an incredible “legacy”. “The plots where gophers were active had more diverse bacterial and fungal communities than the surrounding old-growth forests,” the team explains.
In addition to gophers, another “star” is mushrooms. After the eruption, scientists feared that nearby pine and spruce forests would take a long time to recover, because ash covered the needles and caused them to fall. However, this did not happen thanks to mushrooms.
“These trees have symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi, which take nutrients from fallen needles and help promote rapid regrowth. The trees recover almost immediately in some places. They don’t die off like people do.” think,” said Emma Aronson, an environmental microbiologist at UCR and study co-author.