The northern pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides) brings surprising ecosystem advantages
All Canada Images/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 could 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 know how forests may recuperate from different stresses – together with wildfires and…
