SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - In May 1980, a magnitude-5.1 earthquake accompanied by an avalanche flipped the switch on a volcano in Washington state. With pressure suddenly removed from the magma below, Mount St. Helens spewed lava, ash and debris in the southwestern part of the state. It became the most destructive eruption in United States history. However, not all was lost.
On a destroyed landscape, scientists wondered how life could be restored—so they brought in gophers to dig around in specific areas for a single day. Now, more than four decades later, the benefits from those 24 hours remain visible.
Back then, the scientists only planned to test the short-term chain reaction of the stocky rodents’ activity, says Michael Allen, a biologist at the University of California, Riverside, in a statement. “Who would have predicted you could toss a gopher in for a day and see a residual effect 40 years later?”
Allen and others published a paper in early November in Frontiers in Microbiomes suggesting the gophers played a key role in restoring fungi and bacteria in the soil—and the health of gopher-inhabited areas stood in stark contrast to areas where the gophers had never been.