COSMOS MAGAZINE - In 1980, Mount St Helens erupted in the western USA, killing 57 people and destroying 350km2 of forest.
In 1983, scientists captured 2 wild gophers, and put each of them on a small, fenced enclosure on the ruined volcanic plain. They let the gophers dig for 24 hours, then removed them.
According to a new study, those 2 tiny interventions have caused benefits to the mountain ecosystem that can still be measured decades later.
The study, published in Frontiers in Microbiomes, has found key differences in the fungi and other microbes inhabiting the old gopher plots.
“In the 1980s, we were just testing the short-term reaction,” says study co-author Professor Michael Allen, a microbiologist at the University of California – Riverside, USA, who worked on both the 1983 study and the 2024 update.