A new study, “Structural Complexity Enhancement increases fungal species richness in northern hardwood forests” by Nicholas Dove and William Keeton was published in Fungal Ecology. It marks one of the first studies to show that ecological forestry practices can enhance the richness of edible and mycorrhizal fungi communities.

In the world of forestry, fungi aren’t the sirens of undergrad research.  Forest management, fauna biodiversity, carbon. These enticing, exciting, and appealing topics make tromping through soggy woods on brisk Vermont days worth it.  Thankfully, UVM undergrad Nicholas Dove, and Gund Fellow, Bill Keeton, find the worthiness in fungi. Fungi doesn't sound exciting at first glance, but spend any time thinking about forest ecology and you realize that fungi make the forest world run.  They are major players in decomposition, nutrient uptake, nitrogen fixation, soil aeration, pathogen resistance, plant diversity, and forest structure.

Given the important ecological functions of fungi, can we understand what forest management practices lead to fungi richness?  That’s the question Nicholas and Bill set out to answer. Using a long-term study site on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont they compared four management treatments: single-tree selection, group-selection, Structural Complexity Enhancement, and a control treatment.  Single-tree and group-selection are traditional management practices. Structural Complexity Enhancement is a management technique that accelerates late-successional characteristics in forests. Results indicate fungi richness was significantly higher in Structural Complexity Enhancement sites when compared against the other two treatments and control site.  Within Structural Complexity Enhancement, practices of dead tree and downed log recruitment along with high levels of aboveground biomass had strong impacts on fungi richness. 

What’s the take home message?  We can log our forests and have our fungi too.  We’re now a step closer to understanding the impacts of forest management techniques on forest ecology.  We know that we can harvest in a variety of ways, for a variety of management outcomes, but Structural Complexity Enhancement increases fungi and all of the associated benefits of fungi richness in northern hardwood forests.  Congratulations to Nicholas on this research and his first publication, and to Bill for his growing body of research on sustainable forest management in northern forests.