Manipulating below ground diversity for above ground diversity: application of fungi for vegetation restoration

Abstract

The loss and fragmentation of habitats is one of the main drivers of deteriorating ecosystem functioning and services. This has induced a growing need for conservation and increasingly more – restoration. A central part of land-ecosystems is soil biota with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi being a key constituent. As ubiquitous plant symbionts, AM fungi have a global impact on carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling, soil formation, erosion and leaching processes, therefore influencing all spheres of earth. In soils where disturbance has lead to the loss of soil cover or a drastic change in plant community composition, the absence of suitable AM fungal symbionts can lead to slow post-restoration plant community recovery, with negative implications on ecosystem functioning for decades. Because of this, the manipulation of soil AM fungal composition for restoring plant communities is a highly promising perspective. To test the applicability of this idea, we have set up field inoculation experiments in three ecosystem restoration scenarios in Estonia: restoration of alvar grassland vegetation following clearing; restoration of wooded meadow vegetation following clearing; restoration of vegetation in depleted oil shale quarries. Native soils and plant seeds were collected from target ecosystems in good condition and trap cultures were set up to obtain bulk fungal inoculums. These inoculums were applied with native plant seeds in 18 restoration sites across Estonia. The experiment is monitored for effects and temporal changes in above and below-ground diversity, giving valuable insights into the practical implication of AM fungi for ecosystem restoration. An overview of the hypotheses, methodology and practical boundaries of this experiment will be given in tandem with results from year one of the experiment.