Mycorrhizal allies: synergizing forest carbon and multifunctional restoration.

While forest degradation persists across many regions, restoration efforts have predominantly targeted aboveground carbon, often overlooking critical belowground ecosystem functions. Plant-mycorrhizal associations - key connectors between aboveground and belowground biodiversity - can help to enhance both carbon storage and forest multifunctionality; yet their explicit integration into restoration frameworks remains limited. By synthesizing recent advancements, we highlight the role of plant-mycorrhizal diversity in enhancing soil carbon pools and supporting multiple ecosystem functions. By examining evidence-based restoration cases, we propose a framework linking plant-mycorrhizal associations to sustainably restore resilient and multifunctional forest ecosystems. Incorporating the functional traits of plant-mycorrhizal associations into restoration strategies provides a pathway to effectively address the interconnected biodiversity and climate crises.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Trends in Ecology & Evolution

• Publication date

  2025-08-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.tree.2025.07.004PMID 40813229
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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