From the UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE and the “magic mushrooms” department…
Researchers find mushrooms may hold clues to effect of carbon dioxide on lawns
The researchers focused on American lawns because they knew that grass can play a key role in the global carbon cycle because it pulls carbon out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis; the process used by plants to absorb and harness energy from sunlight and convert it into chemical energy. Most lawns across the United States are similar, but differ regionally in their relative proportions of two main types of grasses, C3 grasses and C4 grasses, which use different metabolic pathways for photosynthesis. However, unlike trees, which build rings year after year, grass leaves little behind to study, so researchers got creative turning to mushrooms which feed on the carbon in lawns.
“We thought that mushrooms could be a valuable indicator of responses of lawns to carbon dioxide levels in ecosystems because they feed on the dead grass and debris, or carbon, that lawns or other plants put into the ground,” said Erik Hobbie, research professor of terrestrial ecology at UNH and lead author on the study. “Since it is challenging to measure blades of grass from grassland ecosystems over decades, we turned to mushrooms, which are widely available through previous collected specimens in labs and museums.”
In the study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences and featured as an article in the American Geophysical Union’s magazine Eos, Hobbie, UNH statistician Ernst Linder, and their colleagues looked at isotopic data from samples of the mushroom Amanita thiersii collected between 1982 and 2009 from 26 locations in the southeastern and south central United States. The scientists combined these data with information on temperature, precipitation, and carbon dioxide concentrations over the same period to look at competition between the two kinds of grass, C3 and C4.
C3 grasses, such as wheat, oats, and ryegrass, are called cool-season plants and thrive in a temperature range of 65°-75° Fahrenheit. C4 plants, which include corn, crabgrass, and bluestem grasses, flourish in warmer and drier environments. These warm-season plants and are more efficient than C3 plants at photosynthesis under low concentrations of carbon dioxide.
Researchers found that the mushrooms, Amanita thiersii, appeared to be good integrators of the carbon in lawn grasses. Temperature was the dominant climatic influence over C3 versus C4 grass distribution. As carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased over those decades between 1982 and 2009 and temperatures rose, changes in grass competition and growth were reflected in the carbon of Amanita thiersii. With every 1°C increase in temperature, the proportion of carbon from C3 grasses, as found in the Amanita thiersii, decreased by 12%. But researchers also found that the relative proportion of C3 grasses increased by 18.5% in response to the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations from 341 to 387 parts per million. This suggests that rising carbon dioxide is already influencing plant competition on the American landscape and that preserved specimens of plants and mushrooms could be used more widely to examine current responses to global change.
###
This project was supported by grant DEB1146328 from the U.S. National Science Foundation and grant 2013-67014-21318 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Attribution is always a difficult topic. When a number of variables, such as temperature, CO2, human intervention via seeding and fertilizing, etc. are all correlated – how do you pick out which one or combination is responsible for observed changes? It seems the standard answer is to say “of course it must be CO2”.
Yes, especially when they are looking at 2nd order events: the mushrooms would potentially be responding to other things which would be responding to carbon dioxide.
Next.
Agreed. The researchers say temperature was the biggest factor. However, had they used a drier area in addition to the ones used, precipitation may have been the dominant factor (just personal observation seems to indicate this). There are too many factors involved.
It has been my experience that mushrooms tend to pop up in lawns (no experience with wheat fields) after several days of rain. Now can I get my $300k research grant?
@ Shei, you are correct they depend much more on water ( cool wet periods) than other contributors, and @ Bill, boy you are a modest guy (unless of course you do the work yourself and in 6 months.)
Tasting is part of a full research …
The Amanita thiersii, although toxic, is not to be confused with the more psychoactive Amanita species such as cothurnata, gemmata, muscaria, pantherina or regalis.
See https://www.erowid.org/plants/amanitas/amanitas.shtml for a more in depth review.
I thought I didn’t need a [/sarc] … 😉
@SasjaL
Thanx, neither did I…
In usual psychedelic parlance, “magic mushrooms” are the psilocybin-containing ‘shrooms of genus Psilocybe, little brown mushrooms which are common in lawns after rains, especially on cow pats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushroom
If your dealer offers you mushrooms for tripping, you want Psilocybe, not Amanita.
The Amanitas are white shaggy mushrooms (as in the pic). Some Amanitas are psychoactive (containing muscimol or ibotenic acid), but many are toxic, some (Amanita phalloides) deadly.
Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) is the archetypal red and white Old World magic mushroom, of toadstool, witchcraft and Siberian shamans.
It is psychoactive, but hard to use and nowhere near as hallucinogenic as the Psilocybe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria.
The erowid article cited above leads with A muscaria.
Amanita therseii is not psychoactive, but it may be moderately toxic.
Just so no one is too mislead by the headline.
Headlines are written this way, within reason. Magic is an effective headline word.
One day about 50 years ago when I was in college, my friend and I headed to the cafeteria to eat lunch. Along the way, we picked some psilocybe ‘shrooms growing in the wet, campus grass, and threw bits and pieces of them into the lettuce salad in the serving line when the cafeteria workers weren’t looking. I have often wondered what the reactions were of the students who happened to consume some of those salad
‘shrooms. Since there was a bit of dirt still clinging to some of them, the students may have had more of a stomach ache than a head trip!
I saw a sign at a flower show which said, “All mushrooms are edible – some only once.”
+1
I think they found “magic mushrooms’ and ate them. Then they wrote this drivel.
Psilocybin is recommended.
I’m not sure what that even means. Again, PR flacks misinterpreting what the scientists tell them.
I agree, commieBob. If the researchers assumed that temperatures rose between 1982 and 2009 at the sites from which the mushrooms were collected (or verified it; wouldn’t that be a strange and innovative approach?) then it sounds like they reported two opposite trends for the same grasses.
Hmmm… Okay, here’s the abstract:
That raises a few questions in my mind:
1. So I guess C4 plants tend to absorb a higher ratio of 13C to 12C than do C3 plants.
That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
Why is that true, and is there really enough of a difference to reliably detect what the ratio of C3 to C4 plants was?
2. Around here, what grows in people’s lawns mostly reflects what they planted in those lawns. If these mushrooms were really from lawns it is hard to imagine that any other factor could overwhelm that one.
3. What are these “% of variance” numbers? Is that some sort of alternative to confidence intervals? What does it tell us?
It doesn’t even sound like the right units (it sounds like the square of the right units)!
4. I found a preprint of the full paper. It says:
“2 Materials and Methods. In Wolfe et al. [2012], gill tissue was subsampled from 48 herbarium specimens of Amanita thiersii collected at 26 different locations between 1982 and 2009 in southeastern and south-central USA. Locations were between 29 °N and 40 °N and 86 °W and 100 °W. Samples were analyzed for %C, %N, δ13C, and δ15N as detailed in Wolfe et al. [2012]. We analyzed the underlying data set from Wolfe et al. [2012] (as provided by B. Wolfe) using multiple regressions…”
Say WHAT? If I understand that correctly, they had a grand total of only 48 dried mushroom samples, collected from 26 different locations, over a 27 year period.
Is that a joke? That can’t be right, can it? How could anything of significance possibly be determined from that?
5. The preprint also says, “Within the central United States the choice of lawn grasses depends on the climatic zone, with more C3 grasses selected in cooler regions and more C4 grasses selected in warmer regions.”
Well, maybe. But here in North Carolina it’s fescue country — and that’s a C3 grass. (However, some people also plant Centipede or Zoysia, and those are C4.)
6. Am I wrong in thinking that Mean Annual Temperature is a very crude indicator of the influence of temperature on plants?
7. Am I wrong in thinking that “mean annual precipitation over a 30 year period ” is an even cruder indicator of the influence of precipitation on plants, especially short-lived plants like grasses, and especially in a study which spanned less than 30 years?
These folks have apparently been doing this sort of work for a long time. I’d never heard of “Sporocarp Δ” so I googled it, and immediately found another paper with Hobbie as a co-author, from back in 1994:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5183622/
Your item 7, referencing mean annual precipitation brings up a question in my mind – if these samples are from lawns, what possible value does mean annual precip have to start with? Most lawns are also irrigated to some degree, so annual precipitation would be irrelevant, I would think.
I reference to “Is this a joke?” I would have to agree. That is like trying to create a temperature record from a single tree, or something like that. No one would do that, right?
daveburton,
The abstract says, “…samples collected between 1982 and 2009 from the Midwestern USA.” While the fungus is common in lawns, they don’t specifically verify that lawns were the source for all of the specimens. It is conceivable that one or more were collected precisely because it was observed in an unusual setting.
It has been my experience that mushrooms don’t grow ubiquitously in my lawn, but seem to prefer locations where there is perhaps another source of food, such as some buried wood.
O Tom,
“I(n) reference to “Is this a joke?” I would have to agree. That is like trying to create a temperature record from a single tree, or something like that. No one would do that, right?”
Nearly lost a monitor!
We can, I think, guess one mann who might do exactly that . . . .
Beautifully put.
Auto
“more research” response of US Senator Lamar Alexander to climategate revelations. Guess this is what he meant. Actually I am envious as my own important research project has not received nearly the funding it deserves.
Intersectional Cognitive Decisional Basis Study of Pontoon Boat Carpet Replacement Adhesive Projects Interaction with Increased Atmospheric CO2 levels Projected By Climate Modeling
Preliminary findings:
1) Decisions to replace pontoon boat carpeting yourself as a money saving measure should be made while sober.
2) Relationships will become stressed during the second weekend of the project. This is especially true toward the end of 10 hour days. Additional finding that all enthusiasm will dissipate by week 3.
3) The alien life form like old adhesive will become more fluid as temperature rises from morning to mid-day.
4) The above reverses after sunset proving the importance of the Sun to Earth temperatures (for those chained to the wall of a cave who didn’t already know that)
5) Human CO2 exhalation spikes can be attributed to the holding power of particular strips of old marine carpeting. Cursing increases also correlate well but require further study.
Everyone can see that this study is at least as relevant to life as we know it as the mushroom/lawn paper. I have requested a funding level consistent with the price of a six-pack of craft beer in my area. Enjoy the Easter weekend. I’ll be in the boat shed.
Preliminary Finding #2 seems to be an additional verification of Universal Law #1:
Happy Wife Happy Life.
For my DIY projects, I’ve found that “as temperature rises from morning to mid-day” there develops a strong demand for cold beer.
We already know that CO2 is a great plant fertilizer. We also have good actual temperature data and other weather data over the time period of this study. It seems to me that correlation among the actual local weather data and the magic mushroom data at specific locations of harvest should be part of this study.
from the article: “grass can play a key role in the global carbon cycle because it pulls carbon out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis”
Here’s the admission that if Carbon Dioxide is accessible by grasses then it’s at ground level. Now the questions for Greenhouse-Gas proponents are: How much heat is that ground level CO2 trapping? Where is that heat and how long is it being ‘trapped’ for? This should be readily measurable (a first for any GHG). Show your science!
Given T rises 0.1-0.2K per decade just a Hiroshima per second. This has been the case for a few decades. How much it would change without coal use, heaven knows.
Slightly OT, anyway.
We already know that atmospheric CO2 enrichment increases plant biomass and growth rate productivity. And we also know that most plants will not grow when atmospheric CO2 Levels drop to 150 ppm. What’s the point of this study besides wasting taxpayer money and keeping confused minds occupied with superfluous details?
Thomas Homer;
You ask
I answer:
Atmospheric CO2 does not “trap” any “heat”, but the CO2 in the lowest 100 meters of the air absorbs all of the IR radiation in the 15 micron band that is emitted from the Earth’s surface.
Richard
richardscourtney says: [Atmospheric CO2 does not “trap” any “heat”, but the CO2 in the lowest 100 meters of the air absorbs all of the IR radiation in the 15 micron band that is emitted ]
Quite the proclamation, but you didn’t show your science. If your assertion is true then what should we expect in regards to the Mars’ atmosphere. With an almost monolithic atmospheric layer of 95% CO2, all of the ’15 micron band IR radiation’ must be absorbed. What band does CO2 then emit this absorbed energy? We should readily be able to see that Mars does not emit any 15 micron IR radiation, but does spike in the CO2 emission band. This has all been verified right?
Thomas Homer:
Yes. The facts I stated have been verified repeatedly by measurement.
Richard
richardscourtney: [Yes. The facts I stated have been verified repeatedly by measurement.]
This is one of your statements:
[ Atmospheric CO2 does not “trap” any “heat” ]
And this has been verified repeatedly by measurement? Does Congress know this? Why is CO2 still designated as a pollutant then?
BTW, I did notice that you didn’t provide any actual repeated measurement. There must be current charts with these measurements from various locations right? Or, are you saying that we can measure these ‘facts’ but we choose not to?
Thomas Horner
Wow. You’re really one righteous & rigorous science dude.
When you get done beating up richardscourtney, I can’t wait for you to confront Michael Mann about cherry-picked tree-rings as climate proxies, or climate-model-geeks about all models running hot. Please get back to us when you have all this under control.
Javert Chip says: [ Thomas Horner – Wow. You’re really one righteous & rigorous science dude.]
I apologize if I come across as ‘righteous’, my intention it to concisely request some measure of scientific proof behind blanket assertions that I contend have not been proven. I would welcome the chance to have a dialog with Michael Mann and have the opportunity to ask him to defend his assertions.
Thomas Homer,
You may not know Richard, but I think that you can trust what he says. He isn’t some blowhard.
Thomas Homer:
You ask me
Yes, it has been verified repeatedly by measurement. And I stated it when I was one of 18 scientists invited from around the world to give a briefing at the US Congress in Washington DC nearly two decades ago.
You need to ask one of your elected representatives – not me – about why one of your American government agencies designates CO2 as a pollutant.
It seems you don’t know that radiation is not heat but may become heat if absorbed by a substance (e.g. the Earth’s surface). Please refer to an elementary text on radiative physics for information on this.
Richard
Thomas,
CO2 ABSORBS then release Infrared Radiation,which is light, moving at about 186,000 miles per second. It absorbs IR light,not heat.
Richard is correct in what he stated.
Thank you richardscourtney and others, for taking the time to respond to me.
I have dwelled on the idea that “CO2 traps heat” and I ‘know’ it to be false. I am frustrated because I don’t have the capacity to defend that position or even describe how I know it to be false.
I completely agree with your assessment that:
[ Atmospheric CO2 does not “trap” any “heat” ]
But when you say: “Yes, it has been verified repeatedly by measurement”, I want to know more about these measurements. What can I use to bolster my position? Why isn’t this widely accepted?
I continue to try to get people to apply what we know to the Mars’ atmosphere, because it’s clear to me that no heat is being trapped on Mars, yet its atmosphere is 95% CO2.
Thomas Homer:
This is off-topic for this thread, but in hope of helping I provide the following that may make it easier to explain matters to others. Please note that it is accepted by everybody who knows any radiative physics.
Firstly, as a clarification I say that the CO2 and H2O molecules in the lowest 100 meters of the air absorb all of the IR radiation in the 15 micron band that is emitted from the Earth’s surface. Water (H2O) is the most powerful greenhouse gas (GHG) and CO2 (carbon dioxide) is the second most powerful.
GHG molecules absorb photons of pertinent wavelength by increasing their vibrational, stretching or rotational energies. These are internal changes to the molecules’ energies: they are NOT changes to the molecules’ kinetic energies that would be changes to the temperature of the GHG molecules.
A GHG molecule that has absorbed a photon is said to be excited. In the air it may lose that excitation by emitting another photon or by collision with another molecule.
1.
If the excited GHG molecule de-excites by emitting a photon then that photon may be released in any direction so half such emissions are downwards and contribute to the back radiation which is absorbed by the Earth’s surface.
2.
Excited GHG molecules may also de-excite by transferring energy to another molecule that collides with the excited molecule. Most de-excitations in the lower atmosphere are by collisions. And most such collisions occur with molecules that are not GHGs because most of the air is nitrogen and oxygen (N2 and O2 molecules) that are not GHGs. The energy transferred to the non-GHG molecules increases their kinetic energy so increases the temperature of the air. Near the Earth’s surface this warming of the air reduces heat loss from the surface.
On their own these facts may cause some to think that enhanced greenhouse effect must result from increased CO2 in the air. Indeed, warmunists often shout, “CO2 is a greenhouse gas” as though it had importance. But that is not a certainty.
Firstly, all the radiation that CO2 can absorb is absorbed in the lowest 100 m of the air and more than all cannot exist. The increase to absorbtion from increased CO2 in the air comes from band broadening (i.e. small increases to the width of the 15 micron and 4 micron absorbtion bands). I think you will want to read this which says and explains
Secondly, change one thing in the climate and other things change, too; e.g. make it warmer and evapouration increases, so cloud cover also increases and that reduces surface heating from the Sun (as every sun bather has noticed when a cloud obscures the Sun).
etc.
Anyway, that is already too much for an off-topic matter so I hope it is sufficient to be helpful.
Richard
My link did not work. It is this
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
Richard
Richard, I am indebted to you for your willingness to share.
I may continue to contest details of your explanations, but your forthcoming nature is immensely appreciated. I understand that this is not the place to continue this discussion, and I look forward to future dialog.
My understanding is that photons need to have more energy than their target to boost the ‘excited’ state of that target. Thus the Earth’s surface cannot heat itself. Also, since the 15 micron band is a constant wave emitted from the earth, the “non-GHG molecules” are saturated and CO2 reflections of the same wave do not increase their energy state.
I believe that this chart showing the Earth’s atmosphere’s capacity to hold water vapor by temperature explains the Earth’s temperature range, as each end of the graph ‘drives’ the temperature back into this range.
http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/3026/3098843/water_vapor_capacity_%20graph_PH.jpg
If you have “magic mushrooms” growing in your lawn you need to put the damned cows back in the pasture. Where do they find over edumacated morons to come up with this crap? As to the effect of carbon dioxide on lawns, it makes them grow. How much of my tax money was pissed away for this sh*t?
I think it obvious that they indeed ingested these said magic mushrooms while writing their essay…
“C3 grasses, such as wheat, oats, and ryegrass, are called cool-season plants…researchers also found that the relative proportion of C3 grasses increased by 18.5% in response to the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations from 341 to 387 parts per million.”
I’ll stipulate that I may be misunderstanding this gibberish, but it appears to be saying higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations favor the development of cool-climate vegetation. Just sayin’…
Excuse me, I am no climate scientist, nor do I play one on TV, but even I know that the mushrooms come out when it is rainy and wet. Maybe these “scientists” have been sampling the crop, and got a bad batch?
When your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. When the only factor that makes any difference is CO2 it has to explain everything, just like the Four Humors of the body were made to explain all illnesses in the ancient world. Before blood circulation and microbiology were discovered.
We can just hope that these magical-molecule CO2 studies will taper off now that the funding is starting to dry up.
I’m not saying the paper is ridiculous, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion the good parts are well hidden in a piece of climate agenda.
This is very important research. I am currently working on a similar proposal to get funding for investigating the effect of CO2 on my home hydroponic set up used for growing “herbs”. By monitoring the quality of said herbs on a daily basis in a suitable cross section of the population invited to my house every day we…
.. sorry, to be continued later, I am a bit hungry now.
hahaha… I’ll bring the beer. G-Funding. Gotta love it.
You’re digging a hole, Badger! 🙂
He’s probably chilling on the sofa with a bag of Doritos. His research is not conducive to digging holes.
The only hole digging here is the very very deep one to experimentally test the-g/c lapse rate.
BTW why don’t we see Doug Cotton round here these days ? Has he been banned as being a denier-denier or something ?
pretty telling.
using fungus that lives on rot/compost to get funding…
No argument. Increased CO2 has predictable and measurable effects on plant growth, virtually all positive.
But the ‘ma
The last of the Obama moonshot funding efforts are being published. Better sell the follow-on funding ideas to Chelsea and other offspring of assorted ex-VIPs and grantors.
As will be seen when the first of several papers are published shortly, there is another effect of rising atmospheric CO2.
The size of human teeth is increasing in those generations born since CO2 commenced its present rate of increase as seen in the Mauna Loa analyses.
The mineral hydroxyapatite, a calcium phosphate, is the major component of tooth enamel. In older generations, the supply of calcium through the growth process has been restricted because of CO2 ambient abundance. There are similarities to shell growth chemistry in the oceans as CO2 affects pH and aqueous calcium chemistry.
For once, in climate research, the larger growth of teeth in youngsters can easily be seen, for example in those big white smiles at prom balls all over the nation. Such smiles are absent in their grandparents, 97% of whom concede that the youngsters’ balls, like their teeth, are bigger.
This teeth size effect interacts widely with other signs of climate change. In terms of the present post, those people with larger front cutting teeth find it easier to harvest mushrooms growing in both C3 and C4 lawn grasses. The more the harvesting of mushrooms, the greater the perturbing effect on yield, requiring larger transfer functions for statistical analysis of variance in mushroom yield interpretation.
Mushrooms have been said to yield best when hept in the dark and fed on bullshit. We contest this assertion. Fortunately, the abundance of light (the inverse of dark) is not a factor affecting human tooth growth maxima, a metric that has surprisingly few exogenous perturbations. (Bullshit has become ubiquitous and can be treated as a persistent constant in statistical analysis).
Adolescent tooth size is therefore expected to be a useful, easy to use indicator of climate change, as future increased research funding is expected to facilitate. The effect has not been found in early milk teeth, which are more the province of the Tooth Fairy effect, which is well understood by most grant-seeking climate researchers.
Geoff
Remember, you saw it first here at WUWT.
Mushroom is only the fruiting body. The biggest and oldest part of fungi is mycelia. It grows on practically anything organic.
“This suggests that rising carbon dioxide is already influencing plant competition on the American landscape…”
This comment belongs in the ‘Earth was a static paradise in perfect equilibrium until the human disease ruined everything’ file. The modern environmental movement is largely based on the myth that environmental change is bad. Science tells us that the only constant in the biosphere of this planet IS change. Change is completely natural, healthy and vital for life on Earth. With or without humans, the Earth’s biosphere will continue to change.
There is no doubt that increasing CO2 is having an impact on plants and that impact is extremely beneficial. The whole world should be rejoicing, but in the twisted modern environmental paradigm, change is bad by definition. So instead of rejoicing, we get warnings of things going wrong and a call to stop it!
It appears that one of the biggest threats to the environment is modern environmentalism.
“It appears that one of the biggest threats to the environment is modern environmentalism.”
Recall that it was verified that Environmentalists studying penguins in Antarctica were shown to negatively impact the penguins’ birth rate.
There’s no mental like Environmental.
I read (probably here) that banding hindered swimming thus decreasing just about everything. Salute to the brave scientist who chose to question common practice and publish the results.
Thomas regarding your questions about Mars check out Wiki, “Mars atmosphere” There might be answers there. Mars has a very thin active atmosphere and very cold.
“‘Earth was a static paradise in perfect equilibrium until the human disease ruined everything’ file.” I am shamelessly stealing this sentence!
If there ever was a group of organisms susceptible to microclimate it would be “mushrooms”. Using temperature and precip from the local weather station approaches malfeasance. Anyone who regularly gathers eatable shrooms knows that they grow only in certain microclimates, and even there they vary greatly from year to year. The only way to conduct this study would be to monitor microclimatic parameters in situ every year over the time span involved. Precip surely has to be as important as temp, and the relationship between the two perhaps even more important (cool/wet etc.). I am a member of Cocorahs (precip network) and can assure you that precip can vary tremendously over short distances. Using data from kilometres away will tell you nothing about microsite reality. The fact they used museum specimens means they weren’t “there” to observe meteorological conditions during the growth period of the mushrooms. Better luck next time.
Why did taxpayers fund this research? It is useless.
Absolutely, 100% agree. Who ever supplied the money is guilty of misuse of public funds and should be exposed
27 years of studying carbon isotopes in mushrooms to discover the battle between wheat, oats, and ryegrass, corn, crabgrass and bluestem grasses on the lawns and agricultural properties?
lets say co2 conc. has doubled in the air..
how much has it gone up in the soil??
more than a smidgeon..??
So I told my boss he was treating me like a mushroom…
So this is why I see less crabgrass than I did when I was mowing lawns as a kid? Carbon dioxide? Cool.
My horse pasture frequently develops Rings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_ring
Some think these are the result of elves dancing; so I don’t get near them.
Click the colored symbol, then note this is 1 of several images.
Consider the very old nature of these ideas.
CO2 has caused many more mushrooms these days, especially in the area of Climate Science.
The elephant in the woodpile that tramples on the whole paper is that lawns are cultivated, managed, farmed, gardened; choose your word preference. They are NOT natural and whatever changes occur are solely down to the owner.