MultiFUNGtionality · Fungal diversity, ecosystem services and forest management: unravelling the role and dynamics of fungal communities in multifunctional Mediterranean forests.

Fungal diversity, ecosystem services and forest management: unravelling the role and dynamics of fungal communities in multifunctional Mediterranean forests.

Forest fungi are a major biodiversity component of Mediterranean forests, and contribute to providing crucial ecosystem services. Thus, changes in fungal communities driven by environmental factors and human actions on ecosystems may have ultimately an impact on human well-being. Understanding and predicting such changes and their subsequent impact on the provision of ecosystem services is crucial to enable scientifically sound decision-making in land–use planning. However, our knowledge on such complex ecological systems is limited due to the high diversity of forest fungi and their cryptic nature. MultiFUNGtionality project aimed at addressing this complexity by contributing to unravelling how fungal diversity is affected by several drivers and, in turn, how it affects the provision of multiple ecosystem services to be further integrated into multifunctional forest management. This was carried out thanks to multi-scale, high-quality data on above- and belowground diversity and its potential drivers. Such data have been analyzed using advanced hybrid modelling techniques, and the resulting models have been combined in simulation-optimization routines to enable science-based decision making in forestry sensitive to fungal diversity. The research carried out in the frame of the project highlighted the crucial role of the climate in fungal dynamics, predicting changes that will also affect their associated ecosystem services. The results of MultiFUNGtionaly demonstrated how the forest management can be used as a tool for the sustainable management for both fungal diversity and mushroom yields. The data analysis at global scale also concluded that forest diversity correlated with forest productivity.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union