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NASA Study Shows Ferns Facilitate Recovery from Environmental Disaster
- NASA-supported scientists have suggested an updated framework for the role of ferns in environmental recovery from disaster.
- Ferns may act as facilitators that ease the way for other plants and animals to re-establish themselves in a damaged landscape.
- The study examines how a biosphere recovers from major upheaval, using what scientists call a ‘facilitative’ framework rather than the long-held ‘competition-based’ framework.
- Ferns are often one of the first plants to re-establish in areas affected by large-scale upheaval events.
- Unlike many other vascular plants, ferns do not flower or seed. Instead, they reproduce via spores.
- The team proposes that, rather than out-competing other species, ferns act as facilitators for ecosystem recovery by stabilizing the ground, enhancing properties of the soil, and mediating competition between other organisms.
- Ferns provide critical information to better understand the fossil record and Earth before humans which is of interest to astrobiology and exobiology.
- NASA’s Space Biology program has supported experiments to study how plants adapt to space with the expectation that knowledge gained can lead to ways by which crops can be cultivated for fresh food.
- “Ferns were able to completely transform Earth’s biosphere following the devastation of the K-Pg [Cretaceous–Paleogene] extinction event.
- The study was published in the journal BioScience.
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