SYDNEY, May 2 (Xinhua) -- An international study led by Australia's University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney found the mosses play an important role in nourishing soil and may mitigating climate change.
The study published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Tuesday, collected samples of mosses growing on soil from more than 123 ecosystems across the globe. The mosses cover a staggering 9.4 million square km in the environments surveyed.
"So for this study, we wanted to look at a bit more detail about mosses and what they actually do, in terms of providing essential services to the environment," said lead researcher David Eldridge with UNSW's School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences.
"We looked at what was happening in soils dominated by mosses and what was happening in soils where there were no mosses. And we were gobsmacked to find that mosses were doing all these amazing things."
The researchers assessed 24 ways that moss provided benefits to soil and other plants, and found in patches of soil where mosses were present, there was more nutrient cycling, decomposition of organic matter and even control of pathogens harmful to other plants and people.
"People think if moss is growing on soil it means the soil is sterile or has something wrong with it. But it's actually doing great things, you know, in terms of the chemistry of the soil, like adding more carbon and nitrogen, as well as being primary stabilizers when you get lots of disturbance," said Eldridge.
The researchers also estimated that compared to bare soils where there was no moss, this ancient precursor to plants is supporting the storage of 6.43 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere. These levels of carbon capture are of a similar magnitude of levels of carbon release from agricultural practices such as land clearing and overgrazing.
"So you've got all the global emissions from land use change, such as grazing, clearing vegetation and activities associated with agriculture - we think mosses are sucking up six times more carbon dioxide," said Eldridge.
The researchers said that the positive ecological functions of soil mosses are also likely associated with their influence on surface microclimates, such as by affecting soil temperature and moisture.
The future research aims to examine whether urban mosses can create healthy soils as effectively as those growing in natural areas.
"We are also keen to develop strategies to reintroduce mosses into degraded soils to speed up the regeneration process," said Eldridge.
"Mosses may well provide the perfect vehicle to kick start the recovery of severely degraded urban and natural area soils." ■