<\/p>\n
\nGod\u2019s creation just continues to astound and amaze! But that shouldn\u2019t be surprising.<\/p>\n
Under your feet is a whole hidden world. While you might see a few mushrooms\u2014the fruiting bodies of fungi\u2014on a walk through the woods, what you can\u2019t see is the vast underground network connecting the plant community. These networks are a vital part of the health of any ecosystem as they facilitate the exchange of nutrients (like phosphorus and nitrogen) and carbon to and from plants. It\u2019s a complex arrangement that we don\u2019t fully understand and that even involves the plants and fungi bargaining with each other. And it\u2019s bigger than we imagined. <\/p>\n
These networks are so vast that if you stretched the fungi end-to-end, they would span roughly 10% of the width of the Milky Way, a distance of 68 quadrillion miles.<\/p>\n
A new study created a visual map of the density of these arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks based on over 16,000 soil core samples from around the world. Surprisingly, they found these networks were densest in undisturbed grasslands (a rapidly vanishing ecosystem), particularly high-altitude or flooded grasslands (like the Florida Everglades). These networks are so vast that if you stretched the fungi end-to-end, they would span roughly 10% of the width of the Milky Way, a distance of 68 quadrillion miles (if that number seems too big to grasp, that\u2019s because it is\u2014\u201cthat\u2019s nearly a billion times the distance of Earth to the sun\u201d!). We can\u2019t comprehend that.<\/p>\n
Because of the way these networks exchange nutrients and carbon with plants, they \u201cgobble up vast amounts of carbon.\u201d<\/p>\n
One estimate found they take in around 4.3 billion tons (3.9 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide equivalent each year, representing roughly 11% of global fossil fuel emissions in 2021.<\/p>\n
This seems important to the modern conversation about climate change, doesn\u2019t it? It\u2019s another reminder of how complex earth is, and how much we don\u2019t know (and we don\u2019t know what we don\u2019t know!).<\/p>\n
Even though these fungi are essential to Earth\u2019s health, it wasn\u2019t known how they were distributed around the world. \u201cThat\u2019s like saying we know every day 100 million cars move across Earth but we have no idea what road network facilitates that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe the reason climate predictions continue to be wrong is: 1) there\u2019s so much we don\u2019t know that isn\u2019t taken into account in models and 2) this climate was designed by God to work for the flourishing of life!<\/p>\n
This kind of research is important for understanding more about God\u2019s creation and how we can better steward land (especially agricultural land) to increase these vital fungal networks. But it\u2019s also an incredible reminder of the creativity and wisdom of our God<\/span> and how interconnected he\u2019s made this world. It\u2019s truly a masterpiece of design.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t forget God<\/span>\u2019s promise to Noah:<\/p>\n While all the days of the earth remain,
God created the earth to be extremely resilient\u2014even in a fallen world.<\/p>\n Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
This item was written with the assistance of AiG\u2019s research team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" God\u2019s creation just continues to astound and amaze! But that shouldn\u2019t be surprising. Under your feet is a whole hidden world. While you might see a few mushrooms\u2014the fruiting bodies of fungi\u2014on a walk through the woods, what you can\u2019t see is the vast underground network connecting the plant community. These networks are a vital<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[9947,2209,9950,9160,9949,488,9948],"class_list":["post-29906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-fungal","tag-massive","tag-milky","tag-networks","tag-span","tag-study","tag-theyd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Seedtime and harvest,
\n
And cold and heat,
\n
And summer and winter,
\n
And day and night
\n
Shall not cease. (Genesis 8:22)
<\/p>\n
\n
Ken
\n<\/p>\n