ERC STARTING GRANT - RECONNECT: Reconnecting underground networks to maximise the flow and storage of carbon in forest soils

Grant ref: 101221236

In order to maximise the potential for habitat restoration initiatives to mitigate our grandest environmental challenges, we urgently need to understand how differing approaches to forest creation affect the recovery of belowground foodwebs and the carbon cycling processes they underpin. This is a formidable challenge: we know startlingly little about how natural climate solutions, such as large-scale reforestation, influence biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the soil, the place where most species on the planet live and where 75% of terrestrial carbon stocks are found. Meeting this challenge not only requires a step change in our understanding of the form and function of complex soil biotic networks and the factors that mediate their reassembly with reforestation, but it also requires new knowledge of the mechanisms that underpin the formation of stable soil carbon stocks. The overarching aim of the RECONNECT project is to address these gaps by building the first complete picture of how contrasting reforestation approaches mediate the whole ecosystem movement of carbon from assimilation to stabilisation in the soil via differences in the reassembly of belowground biotic networks. To achieve this, we will use a unique and powerful combination of landscape scale field experiments, state-of-the-art molecular tools, isotopic tracing and cutting-edge biogeochemistry, to: (i) develop our mechanistic understanding of how contrasting woodland creation approaches (planting versus natural colonisation of trees) impact the flow, stabilisation and storage of carbon in forest soils, and (ii) determine how differing routes to forest creation influence the reassembly and functioning of interconnected mycorrhizal networks. In doing so, we will make breakthroughs in our understanding of the functioning of terrestrial systems and provide a much-needed evidence-base to inform he way we reforest millions of hectares of the Earth’s surface.