A loose collection of thoughts and related texts circling fungi, soil and dynamics
Thoughts of a Spiderweb is an interesting text on distributed/externalised intelligence.
A friend of mine who works for the Baltic Sea Action Group recently pointed me towards soil respiration, i.e.
the production of carbon dioxide when soil organisms respire.
The closely related Carbon sequestration is
the process involved in carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Carbon sequestration involves long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to mitigate or defer global warming. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels.
Related to this are Volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
In an interview on facilitating the production of top soil, Jones explains that
Humus is an organo-mineral complex comprising around 60 percent carbon, between 6 and 8 percent nitrogen, plus phosphorus and sulfur. Humic molecules are linked to iron and aluminum and many other soil minerals, forming an intrinsic part of the soil matrix.
On their excellent page on fungi and their habitats, the New Brunswick Museum explains that
[i]t is generally believed that mycorrhizae have been re-invented many times over the history of land plants. Many different groups of fungi are involved and the form of the actual fungus-root interface, the mycorrhiza itself, varies greatly. Scientists recognize several distinct types of mycorrhizae and can relate these to particular groups of plants and fungi. The most thoroughly studied of these types are arbuscular mycorrhizae, ectomycorrhizae, ericoid mycorrhizae, arbutoid mycorrhizae and orchid mycorrhizae
With a specific type of mycorrhizae, the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus
(plural mycorrhizae or mycorrhizas, a.k.a. endomycorrhiza, AM fungi, or AMF) is a type of mycorrhiza in which the fungus penetrates the cortical cells of the roots of a vascular plant.