Bamboo is an invasive species, but it is also helping with the climate crisis. A lot of bamboo can be beneficial as it absorbs carbon from the air and stores it in the ground long-term. China’s bamboo forests account for 11% of the total carbon sequestration in the country and this number is increasing.
However, this is not just about bamboo. The roots of bamboo foster an entire ecosystem below ground that is better at cleaning up carbon than woody trees. The main characters in this story are bacteria, which fall into two main groups: oligotrophs and copiotrophs. Oligotrophs don’t need many nutrients and are present when bamboo is just starting out and there isn’t much carbon in the soil. Once there is an abundance of carbon, copiotrophs step in and need carbon to survive.
Bamboo brings the carbon, which brings the copiotrophs, and by the time the bamboo is old, a whole community has formed to clean up carbon even better than before.