Healthy Soils, Healthy Trees: Cultivating Biodiversity and Climate Resilience with Mushrooms

Join us for a conversation about the role fungi can play to address land conservation and regeneration, and cultivate resilience to climate change and other challenges in Central Texas.

Speakers will include Dr. Colin Averill, Founder and CEO of Funga, a public benefit corporation reintroducing fungal biodiversity to forests, Cristina Campbell, Biologist at City of Austin working on the City’s first ever mycorrhizal fungi study, and members of CTMS including Andie Marsh (Rhizos LLC), Christopher Kennedy and Angel Schatz!  Learn more about local and regional initiatives to use fungi to support Austin’s urban forest, and how you can get involved in CTMS’s Healthy Soils, Healthy Trees program which uses recycled mushroom blocks to improve the health of local trees, soils and forest lands in East Austin.

Free and open to the public. Registration required and space is limited. Donations accepted.

Refreshments provided by Rambler, Austin Beer Works and Smallhold, a public benefit corporation and network of organic mushroom farms with operations in Brooklyn, Austin, Los Angeles, and beyond.

Support provided in part by City of Austin’s Urban Forestry Program and Patagonia.

Dr. Colin Averill is the Founder and CEO of Funga, a public benefit corporation reintroducing fungal biodiversity to forests, accelerating tree growth and carbon capture as a natural climate solution. Dr. Averill has spent over 17 years studying how soil microbial life controls forest carbon capture, most recently leading a team of ecologists at ETH Zürich’s Crowther Lab. His talk will cover new discoveries in forest fungal microbiology and what they mean for protecting fungal biodiversity, addressing climate change, and accelerating the recovery of nature. Watch his TED Talk on the science behind the work.

Cristina Campbell has a master’s degree in Conservation and Population Biology and is a co-author on the paper titled Native Tree and Shrub Canopy Facilitates Oak Seedling Regeneration in Semiarid Woodland which investigated oak seedling survival in three habitat types and looked at their association with ectomycorrhizal colonization. She currently works as an Endangered Species Biologist for City of Austin Balcones Canyonlands Preserve. Her work has focused on intensively monitoring a Central Texas endangered songbird, surveying cave-dwelling insects, studying Brown Pelican nestling success on islands off the South Carolina coast and helping to restore desert wetlands in west Texas. Cristina is intrigued by mycology in all its facets, from the medicinal uses to the mycoremediation properties.

Andie Marsh is a Soil Health Specialist, with a focus on the applied science of soil biology. She is on a mission to help others restore life and functionality to their soil systems. Equipped with her microscope and the power of observation, she assesses soils and compost amendments to inform restoration efforts through her business, Rhizos LLC. Marsh is a member of the Central Texas Mycological Society and collaborator on the Healthy Soils, Healthy Trees initiative, funded by the City of Austin’s Urban Forestry program.