Deforestation releases more greenhouse gases than the world’s entire ground transport sector. While the United States is in a state of reforestation, South America has the highest deforestation rates in the world. In response, the United Nations is moving massive amounts of climate finance to countries like Ecuador to spur reforestation. While these top-down efforts are responsible for nudging Ecuador to set the lofty goal of reforesting 300,000 acres, reforestation efforts sometimes take precious land away from peasant farmers and create ecologically unstable mono-cultures of non-native forest. These tree plantations are optimized for timber harvesting and not ecological stability nor the ecosystem services associated with it. These ecosystem services are vital to the local community through increased drinking water availability and to the international community through carbon sequestration. Regenerative agroforestry, on the other hand, provides farmers with a livelihood outside of agriculture associated with deforestation. Agroforestation creates a matrix that is valuable to wildlife and the people who depend on the land to survive. Cacao is a tree that grows natively in Ecuador but is not optimal for the highly degraded conditions that cattle farming has created. A meta-review shows that mycorrhizal fungus taken from a nearby intact ecosystem is effective at improving plant growth and survival in a variety of ecosystems. Therefore we ask: Question 1: Does introducing cacao with forest soil increase mycorrhizal fungus abundance and thereby improve cacao's vigor and survival? Question 2: Do soil inoculations create conditions that favor more above and below-ground carbon sequestration through increased production of glomalin and woody tissue?
Results/Conclusions
Preliminary results show our soil inoculations did not increase mycorrhizal fungus colonization in cacao seedlings. There was however an increase in seedling growth in plants treated by forest soil inoculations. Literature suggests that this may be due to an increase in the diversity of soil microbiomes. These more robust microbiomes potentially include taxa of beneficial bacteria and fungus that were negatively impacted by cattle farming. Furthermore, light levels had a large negative effect on plant growth. This highlights the importance of establishing silvopasture well before reforesting and gives clues for what practices best accelerate natural regeneration in coastal Ecuador. Given the low costs, we recommend introducing nearby intact forest soil for ongoing reforestation efforts in order to combat climate change with carbon sequestration and increase farmer's adaptation to extreme weather with agro-reforestation.