Overview
- The research team released a Science paper and an interactive Mycorrhizal Infrastructure Map on June 11, 2026, giving the first high-resolution, global estimates of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal networks in topsoils.
- The study estimates about 110 quadrillion kilometres of AM fungal hyphae in the top 15 cm of soil, containing roughly 300 million tonnes of carbon and moving an estimated 4 billion tonnes CO2‑equivalent into soils each year.
- Model results show roughly 40 percent of AM fungal biomass is concentrated in grasslands, prairies, steppes and wetlands with hotspots in places such as the Florida Everglades, the Tibetan Plateau and South Sudan.
- Large-scale croplands are linked to about 47–50 percent lower fungal network densities, a pattern the authors associate with fertiliser use, fungicides and tillage that break or suppress fungal threads and their root partnerships.
- The maps were built from more than 16,000 soil cores and 322 studies and calibrated with robotic imaging of over 300,000 lab-grown hyphae, but the authors provide ‘maps of ignorance’ to flag wide sampling gaps and urge targeted fieldwork and policy use of the data.