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Fungi and bacteria are binging on burned soil

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Re: Fungi and bacteria are binging on burned soil

#51

Post by beamgirl »

culi wrote: post #41
beamgirl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have to find somewhere with water near a desert, that's why I specified the edge. My understanding of how some deserts form is that farming techniques or other forces can cause a region to stop retaining water as well, and if this happens in a large enough area, it can lead to less rainfall etc. I remember reading about how herd animals trampling prairie grass and shitting all over it causes it to retain signific…

Most deserts are actually formed primarily due to abiotic features like geography. Usually if you see a desert, there's a nearby mountain range that that desert is in the shadow of, preventing it from getting much precipitation You're not wrong about the diminished abilities of a desert to hold water. More people drown in deserts every year than die of thirst. When it does rain it pools up and can easily create flash…

God damn, thanks for all the info. My original intent wasn't actually even fighting desertification, but rather carbon capture, I kinda saw it as a two birds one stone kinda thing. But this gives me a lot of ideas for a multistep process. It seems like jumping right to peat isnt feasible, but maybe some microclimate engineering could be a first step in anticipation of the bogs.

Re: Fungi and bacteria are binging on burned soil

#52

Post by empyrrhicist »

vintermann wrote: post #49
empyrrhicist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do very well" may not be quite correct. When mycorrhizal hosts die, the organism puts all its energy into escaping the dead end - fruiting and dispersing spores. If there are periodic fires that kill trees, that's a great time to spread to a neighboring area. If giant fire that takes out vast areas, that may be less good.

I don't think morels are entirely reliant on myccorrhizal relationships. There have apparently been successful small scale farming attempts without trees, check out the Danish Morel Project. Either way, if hosts dying was all there was to it, you'd expect all sorts of myccorrhizal mushrooms to grow after a fire, and most don't.

I've definitely seen morels go crazy after their host tree dies - whether by fire or a saw. I also agree that they can likely be partially saprobes, so maybe this adaptation is related more to the latter than the former. I was just pointing out that I think it's far from settled that "fire is good for morels" is true in general, especially for mega fires.

Re: Fungi and bacteria are binging on burned soil

#53

Post by bobabob »

MrVandemar wrote: post #24
ycta2023 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live on the west coast of north america - the last few years following wildfires my mum heads up to the scorched mountaintops to pick morels and sells them. Big hauls, hundreds of dollars' worth of rare mushrooms growing in ruined forests.

Perhaps the "rare mushrooms" should be left alone. Perhaps they would become less rare. Edit: that's right folks, keep those downvotes coming for suggesting actually conserving something instead of exploiting it.

Mushroom picking does not impair future harvests – results of a long-term study in Switzerland [1]

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...

Re: Fungi and bacteria are binging on burned soil

#54

Post by AnonMessiah »

ovi256 wrote: post #50
whatshisface wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wild foraged morels that were subpar That sounds kind of like the opposite of how you'd want to slowly end up domesticating a lifeform, doesn't it?

subpar here can mean harvested too late to be palatable, not that the mushroom itself had anything wrong

Yeah, I meant past prime, slimy, partially eaten by slugs etc.

Re: Fungi and bacteria are binging on burned soil

#55

Post by hosh »

detritus wrote: post #10
hinkley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biochar turns out to be more effective in bacteria dominant soils than in fungal, where the fungi provide some of the same services. Tropical forests are bacterial, temperate fungal. I don’t think it’s an accident that terra preta (a biochar + ? complex of soil) is found in Brazil. It’s also a reason we have to be careful about global warming. Temperate forests make great carbon sinks, tropical do not. If we tip more…

Where can I learn more about what you've said, if you have sources to hand, please? I'm a big fan of bio-char (lol), so hearing that it's not-so good in temperate zones is disappointing to me, but interesting. Thanks :)

I don't know what the commentor meant, but I'm reading more as, there are other options in temperate zone perennials that are as effective as biochar.

My favorite way of developing fungal-dominated soil is starting with a basin (for retaining water; I'm in AZ), and filling it with wood chips from chipdrop. The trees I do this with all love it.

I know someone who started sourcing the waste product of mushroom cultivation. These are wood chips that have been "spent", (harvested the fruiting body) but would still have the mycelium to jumpstart this process.

For growing annuals though, I think biochar is still a great option. Another possibility is, rather than looking at temperature, look at rainfall. Tropical forests gets a huge amount of rain, washing away nutrients. Biochar helps retain that. It might be that temperate rainforests would benefit more from biochar than building up fungal soil.

Re: Fungi and bacteria are binging on burned soil

#56

Post by dendrite9 »

beamgirl wrote: post #8
hinkley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biochar turns out to be more effective in bacteria dominant soils than in fungal, where the fungi provide some of the same services. Tropical forests are bacterial, temperate fungal. I don’t think it’s an accident that terra preta (a biochar + ? complex of soil) is found in Brazil. It’s also a reason we have to be careful about global warming. Temperate forests make great carbon sinks, tropical do not. If we tip more…

Fun fact to add about carbon sinks, peat bogs can sink 4-17 times as much CO2 per acre as a forest and acts as an incredible moisture regulator. One of my more out there dreams is to start a big man made peat bog at the edge of a desert.

This article from a year ago about peat in the Congo basin was a really interesting introduction to a peat bog I never knew even existed. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/21/headway/peatl...

Re: Fungi and bacteria are binging on burned soil

#57

Post by legulere »

hosh wrote: post #44
legulere wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would you get all the water for that? The defining characteristic of a desert is little precipitation.

Defining characteristic of arid is little precipitation. Desert is more about sandy soil that supports sparse vegetation. If wasteland can accumulate organic material, and start rebuilding the soil, it starts retaining more water, which brings in more vegetation. This reverses desertification. There are some good examples of this in India. There are parts of the Arizona central canal which accidentally created bearms…

There are also deserts with rocks and not sand. The Sahara in most of its stretch is more rocky than sandy. Arid and desert climate are synonymous.
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