Rising temperatures, desertification and overgrazing are taking a heavy toll on Mongolia’s iconic desert grasslands, as well as its nomadic herding culture. But a team of researchers might have hit on an underground solution. They’ve found clues that protecting key fungal networks that support life above the surface could help to preserve biodiversity, boost climate resilience and revive degraded lands.

In most ecosystems, invisible networks of fungi trade resources with plants by interlocking with their roots. These arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi provide the plants with nitrogen and phosphorus gathered from the soil; in return, the plants send excess carbon through their roots to the fungi, helping to sequester it from the atmosphere.

“Mongolia has very unique fungal networks that power these arid grasslands,” says evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers at the Free University of Amsterdam. Kiers is leading a project to map and identify mycorrhizal-fungus hotspots in Mongolia. “As we fight desertification, we want to be able to protect the fungi that are going to be so important for these plants and ecosystems to be restored.”

Working out ways to maintain healthy fungal networks cannot come quickly enough. Around 77% of Mongolia’s land is degraded, and the country is warming three times faster than the global average. Kiers says that paying more attention to fungal networks could help to address the interconnected global challenges of desertification, biodiversity loss and climate change.

It seems that fungi might be starting to get the attention they deserve: last month, at the latest meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Yerevan, Armenia, 3 more countries signed a pledge to conserve fungi, bringing the total number of signatories to 17. And a road map to help countries make good on that pledge, the Global Strategy for Fungal Conservation, was launched.

Fungus mapping

Kiers’s team is part of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), a non-profit organization that maps fungal systems around the world and works to protect them. Kiers co-founded the organization in 2021. In September, its researchers announced that they had found more than 500 types of fungus in southwestern Mongolia, 90% of which were previously unknown.

Kiers’s team is in talks with several governments to present its maps of fungal hotspots and data in hopes of supporting the development of strategies to curb desertification and boost climate resilience.

But at the same time as researchers such as Kiers are documenting fungal hotspots, the hotspots might be disappearing. In Mongolia, the team found that degraded land had at least 44% fewer species of mycorrhizal fungi and 60% less plant cover than did non-degraded land.