Dr. Aigerim Soltabayeva
Mark Day
Genevieve Stephens
Dr. Alyona Koshkina
Dr. Bethan Manley
Justin Stewart
Kelcie Walther
In recent years, scientists have started sounding the alarm bell that these ecosystems are on the frontline of widespread desertification sweeping Central Asia, with 76% of Kazakhstan at risk of desertification.
North Kazakhstan’s semi-arid grasslands hold tremendous carbon stocks and are predicted to be hotspots of underground fungal biodiversity. In June 2023, members of the SPUN science team traveled to Kazakhstan with collaborators from Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity in Kazakhstan (ACBK) in Kazakhstan to gather data on mycorrhizal biodiversity from the steppe grasslands.
Before the expedition, there was not a single geolocated sample from this region in the GlobalFungi database that SPUN uses to generate our maps. But our models predicted that the region would host high biodiversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, the type of mycorrhizal fungi that are most commonly found in grassland ecosystems.
Together with Genevieve Stephens, Project Manager at RSPB, Dr. Alyona Koshkina, Conservation Biologist at ACBK, and Alexandr Putilin, Head of the ACBK Reintroduction Center for Wild Ungulates, the SPUN team braved sweltering, record-breaking temperatures as they traveled across the seemingly endless grasslands to gather samples from 56 sites.
The team started out in the mountainous southeast corner of Kazakhstan, where they sampled amongst the cinnamon-colored canyons near the borders with China and Kyrgyzstan. Here they took samples to groundtruth their models, so they could compare real life data with their predictions.
As they traveled, their path was often blocked by various ungulates – horses, cows, sheep, and goats wandered freely, pounding the earth beneath their hooves.
The next transect extended north in the eastern region of the country, where the team encountered true Kazakh steppe for the first time. The only break in the golden grasslands was the occasional marmot or suslik surveying the land from atop their burrows. The soil was dry and the weather, scorching. Fragrant artemisia crushed beneath the scientists' feet and vast fields of feathergrass stretched out before them.
The team traveled north from Astana, the country’s capital, up to the region where Kazakhstan meets Siberia. Here the forest-steppe landscape is dotted with birch and pine trees, interspersed with bare, abandoned agricultural land. While the team sampled in the oppressive heat, Siberia was breaking records with temperatures over 37° Celsius.
In total, the team gathered 56 samples along the desert gradient they mapped out. Back in the lab, DNA extraction was carried out by Dr. Aigerim Soltabayeva, a researcher studying plant abiotic stress at Nazarbayev University in Astana. Dr. Soltabayeva will determine who the mycorrhizal residents of these crucial grassland ecosystems are.
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