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Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers has been awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, an honor administered by the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and often described as the “Nobel Prize for the environment.”
Kiers, a world-renowned expert on mycorrhizal networks, will receive the $250,000 award at a ceremony in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on April 23. She is the youngest woman to win the prize.
Mycorrhizal fungi form vast underground networks that connect with plant roots across forest floors and agricultural lands. Kiers’ research has helped reveal how these networks function and how they interface with climate, soil health and food systems.
Her work has also highlighted fungi’s role in climate regulation: Plants allocate about 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide to mycorrhizal fungi each year — roughly one-third of global fossil fuel emissions.
Because fungi remain absent from most conservation frameworks, Kiers co-founded the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), a global initiative to map mycorrhizal fungal biodiversity and advocate for the protection of underground ecosystems. SPUN has developed the high-resolution digital Underground Atlas to help researchers locate the most biodiverse sites on the planet, as well as those currently threatened.
“With 90% of our most diverse underground fungal systems unprotected, urgent action is needed to incorporate fungal data into global conservation plans,” Kiers said. The newly launched Underground Advocates program, developed with New York University Law’s More-than-Human-Life (MOTH) Program, will equip scientists with legal and policy skills to document and protect mycorrhizal fungi worldwide.
The program will work with global conservation and research networks, enabling collaboration across regions and supporting scientists and communities in bringing fungal data into policy and legal channels.
“Toby’s work to translate scientific insight into real-world action, most recently with SPUN’s new Underground Advocates program, demonstrates her leadership in advancing global efforts to protect the fungal networks that sustain life on Earth,” said Rashid Sumaila, chair of the Tyler Prize Executive Committee.
Instituted in 1973 and stewarded by USC Dornsife, the Tyler Prize has recognized environmental leaders including Jane Goodall, Michael Mann and Gretchen Daily. At USC Dornsife — home to USC’s Environmental Studies program and the Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability — the award reflects the university’s broader commitment to environmental research and education.
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