When Mount St Helens erupted in 1980 , the ensue lava , ash , and dust turn the landscape painting wasteland for miles around . It was empty the land would take a retentive time to recover from the eruption . But one team of scientists had an idea about how they could help speed up the cognitive operation ; send off a few gophers there on a solar day trip .

Plant life history struggle to repay to the area around Mount St Helens , now under a layer of pumice fragment . While the top bed of soil were destroyed by the eruption and lava flow , the grime underneath could still be rich in bacterium and fungi .

" Soil microorganisms regulate nutrient cycling , interact with many other organism , and therefore may support successional pathway and complementary ecosystem functions , even in rough conditions , " a squad of researchers explained in a fresh paper on the area ’s recovery .

" With the exception of a few pot , there is no room most plant roots are effective enough to get all the nutrients and body of water they need by themselves , " work co - author , University of California Riverside microbiologist Michael Allen , explained in astatement . " The fungi transport these thing to the plant and get carbon they need for their own growth in exchange . "

After the eruption , research worker believe that gophers could be ideal for render it all to the top .

" They ’re often regard plague , but we thought they would take old grease , move it to the surface , and that would be where recovery would occur , " Allen tote up .

Two years after the eruption of Mount St Helens , local spermophile were sent to the country in what must have been quite a confusing twenty-four hour period stumble , even if the animals were not cognisant of the news . The gophers were placed in introduce area for the experiment and spent their day dig out around in the pumice stone .

Despite only spending one twenty-four hours in the area , the encroachment they had was noteworthy . Six years after their trip , there were over 40,000 flora thriving where the gophers had gotten to work , while the surrounding land stay , for the most part , barren . Studying the expanse over 40 age afterwards , the team institute they had left one netherworld of a legacy .

" Plots with historic pocket gopher natural action harbored more diverse bacterial and fungous communities than the surrounding sure-enough - growth forests , " the team excuse . " We also found more diverse fungous community in these long - term lupin pouched rat plots than in timber that were historically clearcut , prior to the 1980 eruption , nearby at Bear Meadow . "

" In the 1980s , we were just testing the short - condition reaction , " Allen added . " Who would have forecast you could sky a Minnesotan in for a twenty-four hour period and see a residual effect 40 years later ? "

While the gophers should be praise for their strange part in the story , the actual mavin of the retrieval campaign are the kingdom Fungi . After the eructation , scientists worried that nearby pine and spruce forests would take a long time to retrieve , as the ash tree covered their acerate leaf and led to them return off . However , this did n’t happen , again thanks to fungi .

" These tree have their own mycorrhizal fungi that picked up nutrients from the dropped needle and helped fuel rapid tree regrowth , " UCR environmental microbiologist and newspaper co - author Emma Aronson added . " The trees descend back almost at once in some place . It did n’t all die like everyone think . "

Comparing the forest to a nearby forest that had recently been cut , thus being devoid of the layer of phonograph needle , they found stark differences .

" There still is n’t much of anything growing in the clearcut country , " Aronson said . " It was shocking looking at the old growth forest soil and compare it to the dead area . "

The study is published in the journalFrontiers in Microbiomes .