Underground fungi detected from space
Tuesday, May 3, 2016 - 16:40
in Biology & Nature
Just as a person's skin indicates if s/he has a healthy diet, colored satellite images of forests in the Smithsonian's Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) indicate if a forest has a healthy diet. Information about the trees' access to nutrients based on its relationships with two different types of underground fungi is now detectable from space, making it possible for scientists to measure ecosystem productivity and responses to environmental change on vast scales.