40 years ago, scientists plopped two gophers into fenced areas at Mt St Helens to see if they could help the environment recover after a devastating volcanic explosion. The effects of the experiment decades later were far beyond the scientists’ expectations.
On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 AM, Mt St Helens erupted and blanketed the surrounding area in ash, debris, and mud. The eruption killed 57 people, destroyed the local ecosystem, and sent ash clouds across the globe. The landscape leftover was barren and void of life. Three years later, scientists took two gophers from the southern side of the mountain and let them dig in fenced enclosures on the pumice plains for 24 hours. Gophers helped revive the landscape, but how?
According to a study published on Frontiers, the pumice slabs where the gophers were placed contained no carbon or nitrogen prior to the experiment. Plants need these elements to survive. In addition to digging around and returning nutrients to the surface, the gophers brought materials and fungi with them. Mycorrhizal fungi attach to plant roots, and in most cases, a trade is made. The fungus gets carbohydrates from the plant’s photosynthesis, while the plant receives inorganic nutrients. While the gophers may have restored the Mycorrhizas, the fungi themselves are the unseen heroes regenerating the slopes of Mt St Helen.
The mycorrhizal fungi helped in areas the eruption affected beyond the gopher pens. Forests were covered in ash, and the trees dropped their needles. “These trees have their own mycorrhizal fungi that picked up nutrients from the dropped needles and helped fuel rapid tree regrowth,” said Emma Aronson, an environmental microbiologist at University of California-Riverside (UCR). Other forests that had been logged prior to the eruption did not recover well. Without the needles of the trees, the mycorrhizal fungi had no nutrients to aid the forest’s recovery. “There still isn’t much of anything growing in the clearcut area,” Aronson said, “It was shocking looking at the old growth forest soil and comparing it to the dead area.”
Over the decades scientists have visited the gopher plots to witness the effects of the gophers. Michael Allen, microbiologist at UCR and part of the initial experiment, said “In the 1980s, we were just testing the short-term reaction. […] Who would have predicted you could toss a gopher in for a day and see a residual effect 40 years later?”
Sources:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/focus/mt-st-helens-gophers
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/how-gophers-brought-mount-st-helens-back-life-one-day
https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/11/05/how-gophers-brought-mount-st-helens-back-life-one-day
https://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/mycorrhiza.html
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/environment/gophers-mount-st-helens
https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/earth-sciences/35-years-on-scars-of-mount-st-helens-eruption-remain
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/stratoguide/helenfact.html
https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanic_ash/mount_st_helens_health.html
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiomes/articles/10.3389/frmbi.2024.1399416/full#B71