Quantitative assessment of the differential impacts of arbuscular and ectomycorrhiza on soil carbon cycling.

A significant fraction of carbon stored in the Earth's soil moves through arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) and ectomycorrhiza (EM). The impacts of AM and EM on the soil carbon budget are poorly understood. We propose a method to quantify the mycorrhizal contribution to carbon cycling, explicitly accounting for the abundance of plant-associated and extraradical mycorrhizal mycelium. We discuss the need to acquire additional data to use our method, and present our new global database holding information on plant species-by-site intensity of root colonization by mycorrhizas. We demonstrate that the degree of mycorrhizal fungal colonization has globally consistent patterns across plant species. This suggests that the level of plant species-specific root colonization can be used as a plant trait. To exemplify our method, we assessed the differential impacts of AM : EM ratio and EM shrub encroachment on carbon stocks in sub-arctic tundra. AM and EM affect tundra carbon stocks at different magnitudes, and via partly distinct dominant pathways: via extraradical mycelium (both EM and AM) and via mycorrhizal impacts on above- and belowground biomass carbon (mostly AM). Our method provides a powerful tool for the quantitative assessment of mycorrhizal impact on local and global carbon cycling processes, paving the way towards an improved understanding of the role of mycorrhizas in the Earth's carbon cycle.

New nitrogen uptake strategy: specialized snow roots.

The evolution of plants has yielded a wealth of adaptations for the acquisition of key mineral nutrients. These include the structure, physiology and positioning of root systems. We report the discovery of specialized snow roots as a plant strategy to cope with the very short season for nutrient uptake and growth in alpine snow-beds, i.e. patches in the landscape that remain snow-covered well into the summer. We provide anatomical, chemical and experimental (15)N isotope tracking evidence that the Caucasian snow-bed plant Corydalis conorhiza forms extensive networks of specialized above-ground roots, which grow against gravity to acquire nitrogen directly from within snow packs. Snow roots capture nitrogen that would otherwise partly run off down-slope over a frozen surface, thereby helping to nourish these alpine ecosystems. Climate warming is changing and will change mountain snow regimes, while large-scale anthropogenic N deposition has increased snow N contents. These global changes are likely to impact on the distribution, abundance and functional significance of snow roots.