The northern pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides) brings sudden ecosystem advantages
All Canada Photographs/Alamy
Two years after Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, a workforce of researchers helicoptered in a gopher to the ash-covered panorama. A long time later, the exercise of that single gopher burrowing for a single day might have helped the decimated ecosystem regrow by boosting the range of soil fungi.
“There’s something to be said about learning lessons from the gophers,” says Mia Maltz on the College of Connecticut, who has used the eruption to grasp how forests may get better from different stresses – together with wildfires and…
