Fungi Underground Are Visible from Space express
Beneath your feet in the forest, a quiet life unfolds: fungi weave around tree roots and trade nutrients with them. But how do you count how many fungal species are in the soil without digging up the whole forest? It turns out the answer can be seen from space. Spectroscopic analysis of satellite images, processed by a smart program, yields a map of underground diversity.
The program finds patterns in the colors and textures of the images on its own, without needing human hints. It explained more than half of the variation in fungal species counts across 12,000 sites from Europe to Asia. Moreover, satellite data proved more useful than climate, soil, and vegetation type combined.
With this level of detail, you can track fungi over time. In UK forests, old oak woodlands are losing fungal species faster than young plantations. The satellite sees how the invisible half of the forest is changing.
The mycelium of a single honey fungus in Oregon covers nearly 10 square kilometers: it's the largest living organism on Earth.
In Jeff VanderMeer's novel The Fungal King, an underground fungal network controls the forest — the new method allows us to monitor such a network from space.