Illinois Mycological Association

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Dr. Carrie Andrew will be our speaker for the month of August.

She describes her talk entitled "Forecasting the fungal future: mushrooms, carbon dioxide and ozone." below.

"Step back for a minute and consider the Chicago traffic in summer.  It smells, it makes it hard to breathe, the combusted fossil fuels billow upwards toward the sun, drenching our atmosphere in higher levels of carbon dioxide and ozone.  We know that it's more difficult for us, as humans, to breathe during high ozone days, be it here in the Chicago region or around the globe in Beijing, China.  Additionally, plants actually respond well to increased carbon dioxide; meanwhile, people and mushrooms wait for the photosynthetic conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen that we breathe.  

In this presentation I will peer into the crystal ball and discuss how mushrooms have been found to respond to increased ozone and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, at levels approximating the year 2050.  I will then shift below-ground, tracing hyphae from the mushroom to the food source in the soil, wondering how that part of the fungus will respond.  This presentation promises to put mushroom production in a new light, one that even Al Gore somehow missed during his global campaign against climate change."

Here is Dr. Andrew's mini autobio:

"I've been teaching mycology and ecology since obtaining my doctoral degree (only a year ago!).  Last semester found me commuting back and forth to UW-Madison to teach.  I now commute within the Chicago area to Northeastern Illinois University.  Prior to this I spent five winters obtaining my doctoral degree in the "far north" Houghton, MI, and commuting 3 hours south to Rhinelander, WI for field work, which was conducted at the Aspen FACE (Free Air CO2 and O3 Enrichment) site.  The presentation is based of the doctoral work."