Soil Biodiversity
Soil Biodiversity
Life Beneath the Soil Surface
Soil is one of the most biologically diverse habitats on Earth. It contains enormous communities of bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, nematodes, springtails, mites, insects, earthworms and many other organisms. Estimates suggest that a majority of Earth's species depend on soil for at least part of their life cycle.
Much of this diversity remains poorly documented. Soil organisms are frequently microscopic, difficult to identify and distributed in highly complex habitats. Molecular techniques such as environmental DNA sequencing and metagenomics have dramatically expanded knowledge of belowground biodiversity, revealing vast numbers of previously unknown microorganisms and ecological interactions.
Soil biodiversity varies with climate, soil chemistry, vegetation, land use, geography, moisture and disturbance. Global surveys have revealed distinct distributions of bacteria, fungi, earthworms, nematodes and other organisms, while also exposing major geographic and taxonomic gaps in existing biodiversity data.
Soil Organisms and Food Webs
Soil ecosystems contain interconnected food webs extending from microorganisms to larger invertebrates. Bacteria and fungi decompose organic material and process nutrients. Protists and nematodes consume microorganisms and other organisms, transferring nutrients through the food web. Springtails, mites, earthworms, termites, ants and other soil animals fragment organic matter, alter soil structure and influence microbial communities.
Fungi occupy particularly important ecological roles. Some decompose dead organic matter, some cause plant diseases and others form beneficial relationships with plants. Mycorrhizal fungi associate with plant roots and can improve access to nutrients and water while receiving carbon produced through photosynthesis.
Earthworms and other soil engineers physically restructure soil by creating pores, mixing organic and mineral material and influencing aeration, infiltration and nutrient availability. Termites, ants and other macroinvertebrates can similarly alter decomposition and soil structure.
These organisms do not operate independently. Biodiversity across multiple trophic levels influences the movement of energy and nutrients through soil food webs. Research increasingly emphasizes interactions among bacteria, fungi, protists, nematodes and larger animals rather than studying individual groups in isolation.
Ecosystem Functions and Services
Soil biodiversity supports many fundamental ecosystem processes. Diverse soil communities contribute to decomposition, nutrient cycling, soil formation, plant productivity, carbon storage, water regulation and suppression of some pathogens.
Experiments that reduce soil-community diversity have demonstrated declines in decomposition, nutrient retention, plant diversity and other ecosystem functions. Studies across forests, grasslands, drylands, croplands and urban environments similarly show that multiple components of soil biodiversity contribute to ecosystem multifunctionality.
Soil organisms play particularly important roles in carbon and nutrient cycling. Microbial communities decompose organic matter and transform nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients into forms that plants can use. Soil animals accelerate decomposition by fragmenting litter and interacting with microbial decomposers.
Biodiversity may also increase ecological resilience. Diverse communities contain organisms with different environmental tolerances and ecological functions, helping ecosystems continue functioning when conditions change.
Agriculture and Soil Biodiversity
Agricultural practices strongly influence belowground biodiversity. Intensive tillage, simplified crop rotations, heavy pesticide use and some fertilizer regimes can reduce or restructure microbial and soil-fauna communities.
Conservation-oriented practices can often produce more favorable conditions for soil organisms. Cover crops, reduced tillage, no-tillage, crop rotations, organic amendments, agroforestry and diversified farming systems can increase organic matter, provide continuous plant roots and reduce physical disturbance.
Research on organic farming generally finds higher microbial biomass and biological activity than under conventional management, although outcomes vary with climate, soil type, crop system and specific management practices. Organic certification alone does not guarantee greater biodiversity; individual practices and environmental conditions can be equally or more important.
Diversified crop rotations can strengthen belowground food webs and microbial interactions. Cover crops can increase earthworm and arthropod abundance, while reduced tillage frequently benefits earthworms and other organisms sensitive to soil disturbance.
Pesticides can affect non-target soil organisms. Springtails and other soil fauna have shown sensitivity to pesticide exposure, while microbial communities can also be altered by chemical inputs.
Organic amendments such as manure, compost and biochar can influence soil biodiversity by adding carbon, nutrients and habitat. Their effects depend on amendment type, quality, quantity, soil conditions and application rate.
Climate Change, Pollution, and Disturbance
Soil biodiversity is increasingly affected by climate change and other global environmental pressures. Warming, drought, altered precipitation, land-use change, pollution and biological invasions can restructure soil communities and alter ecosystem functioning.
Long-term evidence indicates that rising temperatures can reduce microbial diversity in some environments. Warming can also shift bacterial and fungal community composition and change the flow of energy through soil food webs.
Drylands are particularly sensitive to changing precipitation and increasing aridity. Studies across large aridity gradients show that bacteria, fungi, protists and soil animals respond differently to declining moisture, with consequences for ecosystem multifunctionality.
Pollutants including pesticides, heavy metals, plastics, persistent chemicals and other contaminants can affect microbial diversity, community composition and ecological processes.
Wildfire can cause long-lasting changes in soil biology. Fire severity influences bacterial and fungal communities, while post-fire practices such as salvage logging may affect the speed and direction of biological recovery. Soil organisms can also contribute to the restoration of decomposition and nutrient cycling after disturbance.
Forests, Grasslands, Drylands, and Urban Soils
Soil biodiversity differs substantially among ecosystems. Forest soils contain complex fungal, microbial and animal communities associated with trees, litter and woody material. Grasslands support diverse microbial communities and soil fauna influenced by plant diversity, grazing and climate.
Dryland and savanna soils experience strong moisture limitations. As aridity increases, biological interactions and soil multifunctionality can weaken, although microbial biodiversity may become increasingly important for maintaining ecosystem processes under severe drought.
Urban soils also contain substantial biodiversity. Studies of urban greenspaces across multiple continents have found positive relationships between soil biodiversity and carbon storage, decomposition, nutrient cycling, plant productivity and water regulation.
Urbanization can nevertheless homogenize some soil communities. Parks, gardens and other vegetated areas may therefore serve as important refuges for belowground organisms within cities.
Restoration of Soil Biodiversity
Restoring vegetation alone does not necessarily restore the entire soil ecosystem. Soil microbial communities and soil fauna can recover at different rates, sometimes requiring decades after severe disturbance.
Research in mines, degraded agricultural soils, forests and other disturbed landscapes demonstrates that revegetation can increase microbial diversity and biological activity. However, recovery depends on factors such as soil chemistry, organic matter, vegetation, disturbance history and the availability of organisms capable of recolonizing the site.
Restoration strategies increasingly consider soil organisms directly. Organic amendments, reduced disturbance, plant diversity, litter inputs and restoration of natural vegetation can help rebuild soil food webs.
Because belowground and aboveground biodiversity patterns do not always coincide, successful conservation and restoration cannot assume that protecting plants and animals automatically protects soil organisms.
Monitoring and Conservation
Soil biodiversity has historically received less conservation attention than aboveground biodiversity. Many protected-area systems and environmental policies were developed primarily around plants, vertebrates and visible habitats.
Large-scale monitoring initiatives are beginning to address this gap. Global databases now compile observations of fungi, bacteria, nematodes, earthworms and other organisms, while environmental-DNA surveys allow researchers to examine many groups simultaneously.
European monitoring programs and international soil-biodiversity initiatives are developing standardized methods for measuring biological soil condition. These efforts aim to incorporate belowground biodiversity into soil management, agricultural policy and broader biodiversity conservation.
Major knowledge gaps remain. Tropical regions, parts of Africa and Asia, and many understudied groups remain poorly represented in global datasets. Improving monitoring will require coordinated sampling, standardized methods and greater integration of soil biodiversity into conservation planning.
Soil Biodiversity and Human Well-Being
Human societies depend indirectly and directly on belowground biodiversity. Soil organisms help maintain agricultural productivity, nutrient availability, clean water, carbon storage and ecological resilience.
Healthy soil communities can also contribute to disease suppression and influence interactions among plants, animals, microorganisms and people. These connections have led researchers to increasingly view soil biodiversity within broader concepts of environmental and human health.
Protecting soil biodiversity therefore has implications beyond conserving individual organisms. It supports the ecological systems responsible for food production, functioning landscapes and many services upon which human societies depend.
Conclusion
Soil is not simply an inert medium supporting plants. It is a living ecosystem containing immense biological diversity and complex networks of interactions.
Bacteria, fungi, protists, nematodes, earthworms, arthropods and countless other organisms regulate decomposition, nutrient cycling, soil structure, plant growth, carbon storage and many other ecosystem processes. Their combined activity helps determine how terrestrial ecosystems respond to agriculture, pollution, climate change and disturbance.
Research increasingly shows that conserving visible biodiversity aboveground is not sufficient to protect biodiversity belowground. Soil organisms require direct monitoring, conservation and restoration.
Agricultural diversification, reduced disturbance, cover crops, organic inputs, restoration of vegetation and improved soil-management practices can help maintain or rebuild soil biological communities. At the same time, stronger monitoring and conservation policies are needed to address major gaps in knowledge and protection.
Recognizing soil as one of Earth's great reservoirs of biodiversity changes the way land conservation must be understood. Protecting ecosystems ultimately requires protecting the living communities both above and below the ground.
Soil Biodiversity
Foundations, Importance, and Ecosystem Function
| Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo et al. | Nature Reviews Biodiversity | 2025
Reviews advances in understanding how soil biodiversity controls nutrient cycling, decomposition, plant productivity, climate regulation, pathogen control, and other ecosystem functions, while identifying major gaps in monitoring and urban-soil research.
| Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo et al. | PLOS Biology | 2025
Provides a broad synthesis of soil organisms, food webs, ecosystem functions, global-change threats, mapping initiatives, and conservation needs, emphasizing the enormous biological diversity hidden belowground.
| Mark A. Anthony et al. | Current Biology | 2024-05-06
Reviews why restoring soil organisms is essential for soil health, food production, water purification, carbon storage and ecological resilience in degraded terrestrial ecosystems.
| David C. Coleman et al. | Soil Microbiology, Ecology and Biochemistry | 2024
Surveys soil animals from microscopic predators to earthworms, termites and ants, explaining their roles in decomposition, food webs, nutrient cycling and physical engineering of soil.
Estimates that approximately 59% of Earth's species depend on soil for at least part of their life cycle, making soil potentially the single most biodiverse habitat on Earth.
| FAO et al. | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | 2020
Major global assessment describing soil microorganisms, microfauna, mesofauna and macrofauna, their ecosystem functions, threats, knowledge gaps, agricultural importance and conservation needs.
| Unai Pascual et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2015
Develops an economic framework for valuing soil biodiversity, including its contributions to production, ecosystem services, resilience and ecological insurance against environmental uncertainty.
| Richard D. Bardgett and Wim H. van der Putten | Nature | 2014-11-26
Landmark review explaining how microorganisms and soil animals influence terrestrial ecosystem functioning, aboveground biodiversity, plant communities, nutrient cycling, and ecological responses to environmental change.
| Mirjam Pulleman et al. | Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability | 2012
Reviews European approaches to measuring soil biodiversity and using biological indicators to connect land management, soil functioning and ecosystem-service delivery.
| Lijbert Brussaard et al. | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2007
Examines how diverse soil communities contribute to resilience, nutrient cycling, disease suppression and sustainable agricultural production, while discussing the limits of biodiversity-function relationships.
Global Patterns, Mapping, Monitoring, and Conservation Policy
| EU Soil Observatory | European Commission Joint Research Centre | 2026
Describes ongoing European efforts to standardize soil-biodiversity monitoring, develop biological descriptors and incorporate belowground biodiversity into long-term soil policy.
| Jason E. McDermott et al. | Nature Microbiology | 2024
Compiles nearly 3,000 soil metagenomes and more than 600,000 uncultivated viral genomes, revealing immense unexplored viral diversity and possible roles in global biogeochemical cycling.
| David J. Russell et al. | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Introduces Edaphobase 2.0, an international data infrastructure designed to harmonize and analyze geographically distributed soil-biodiversity records.
| Joint Research Centre | European Commission | 2023-07-18
Summarizes the first continent-wide molecular assessment of European soil eukaryotes, including fungi, protists, nematodes, arthropods and other organisms.
| Maëva Labouyrie et al. | Nature Communications | 2023-06-08
DNA survey of 715 sites in 24 European countries maps bacterial and fungal diversity across forests, grasslands and croplands.
| Romy Zeiss et al. | Conservation Biology | 2023-03-13
Examines shortcomings in European soil-biodiversity conservation and proposes stronger links among legislation, protected-area management and soil monitoring.
| Alberto Orgiazzi et al. | European Journal of Soil Science / Joint Research Centre | 2022-09-22
Describes the LUCAS Soil Biodiversity and Soil Pesticides programs as standardized European tools for soil monitoring and environmental policy.
| Julia Köninger et al. | Biological Conservation | 2022-04-12
Reviews European policy and concludes that soil biodiversity receives inadequate and fragmented legal protection across the European Union.
| Alberto Orgiazzi | Conservation Letters | 2022-03-14
Discusses how the definition of soil biodiversity affects what organisms, ecological processes and habitats are included in conservation policy.
| Carlos A. Guerra et al. | Science | 2021
Proposes a global framework for tracking, targeting and conserving soil biodiversity within international biodiversity monitoring and conservation programs.
| FAO Global Soil Partnership | Food and Agriculture Organization | 2021
Presents international recommendations for measuring, monitoring, conserving and sustainably using soil biodiversity following the Global Symposium on Soil Biodiversity.
| Carlos A. Guerra et al. | Nature Communications | 2020
Analyzes more than 17,000 sampling sites and finds major spatial, taxonomic and functional biases, with remarkably little overlap between biodiversity measurements and ecosystem-function data.
| Tomáš Větrovský et al. | Scientific Data | 2020
Introduces a worldwide database aggregating fungal DNA metabarcoding records to support studies of soil fungal diversity, distribution, environmental preferences and biogeography.
| Jing Luan et al. | Nature Communications | 2020
Shows that body size helps determine how dispersal, environmental filtering and spatial processes shape bacteria, fungi and nematode communities at continental and global scales.
| Helen R. P. Phillips et al. | Science | 2019-10-25
Uses thousands of sites from 57 countries to map earthworm richness, abundance and biomass, revealing global patterns unlike those commonly observed in aboveground animals.
| Johan van den Hoogen et al. | Nature | 2019-07-24
Maps an estimated 4.4 × 10^20 soil nematodes worldwide and describes major differences among bacterial feeders, fungal feeders, predators, omnivores and plant parasites.
| Mohammad Bahram et al. | Nature | 2018-08-01
Uses thousands of soil samples to examine global bacterial and fungal diversity, functional genes, environmental controls and interactions within the topsoil microbiome.
| Erin K. Cameron et al. | Nature Ecology & Evolution | 2018-06-04
Identifies major geographic and taxonomic gaps in global soil-biodiversity datasets, particularly across tropical regions, central Asia, Africa, Canada and Russia.
| Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo et al. | Science | 2018-01-19
Maps dominant bacterial taxa across six continents and finds that a relatively small number of bacterial phylotypes account for a surprisingly large share of global soil bacterial communities.
| Leho Tedersoo et al. | Science | 2014
Global survey demonstrating strong biogeographic patterns among soil fungi and showing that climate, soil conditions, vegetation and geographic isolation structure fungal communities.
Bacteria, Microbiomes, and Microbial Diversity
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2026
Examines 128 organically managed fields and finds that both inherent soil properties and long-term management practices shape microbial communities, including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.
| Various authors | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2024
Reviews evidence that practices conserving or adding organic carbon can increase bacterial richness and alter microbial composition and nutrient-cycling functions.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Shows how plant residues, surrounding vegetation and microbial source communities alter microbial diversity and ecological functioning in agricultural soils.
| Martin Hartmann and Johan Six | Nature Reviews Earth & Environment | 2022-11-22
Explains how soil aggregation, pore networks, water, oxygen and nutrients interact with microbial communities to regulate fertility and ecosystem functioning in agricultural soils.
| Samiran Banerjee and Marcel G. A. van der Heijden | Nature Reviews Microbiology | 2022-08-23
Connects soil microbial biodiversity with plant, animal and human health, describing dozens of microbiome functions relevant to pathogens, food production, nutrient cycling and environmental health.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2022
Compares bacterial networks under conventional, transitioning, natural and organic maize systems and identifies microbial community characteristics associated with different forms of management.
| Various authors | Ambio | 2022
Uses environmental DNA to compare bacteria, fungi and other eukaryotes under conventional, reduced and no-tillage farming, finding strong compositional changes along the disturbance gradient.
| Carlos A. Guerra et al. | Global Ecology and Biogeography | 2021-02-19
Projects changes in global bacterial and fungal communities through 2090, including potential increases in local bacterial richness accompanied by widespread homogenization of microbial communities.
| Concha Cano-Díaz et al. | Global Ecology and Biogeography | 2020-09-15
Maps photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic cyanobacteria globally and demonstrates distinct ecological preferences related to aridity, acidity, climate and other environmental factors.
| Zhenghu Zhou, Chuankuan Wang and Yiqi Luo | Nature Communications | 2020-06-17
Synthesizes experimental evidence on how warming, elevated carbon dioxide, altered precipitation and nutrient enrichment affect soil microbial diversity and functioning.
Fungi and Mycorrhizal Biodiversity
| Matthias C. Rillig | Nature Reviews Microbiology | 2026-05-21
Reviews soil fungal diversity and the roles of fungi as decomposers, plant mutualists, pathogens and fundamental participants in carbon, nutrient and energy flows.
| Susan Wairimu Muriuki et al. | Annals of Microbiology | 2026-04-13
Compares fungal communities after more than 15 years of contrasting agricultural management at Chuka and Thika, providing rare long-term evidence from tropical Kenyan agroecosystems.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2023
Finds that intensive farmland management reduces fungal diversity and that fungal diversity is strongly associated with multiple soil ecosystem functions.
| Martti Vasar et al. | Mycorrhiza | 2022
Examines worldwide arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities and the ecological and evolutionary processes governing their taxonomic and phylogenetic assembly.
| Eleonora Egidi et al. | Nature Communications | 2019
Finds that despite enormous fungal species richness, a comparatively small group of Ascomycota taxa dominates many soils globally.
| Various authors | Frontiers in Microbiology | 2018
Reviews fungal diversity across agricultural, horticultural, grassland and forest soils and discusses fungal contributions to decomposition, nutrient cycling and soil health.
| Joseph R. Jenkins et al. | GCB Bioenergy | 2016-05-10
Uses next-generation sequencing to investigate how biochar amendments change soil bacterial and fungal communities and associated soil functions across European sites.
| John Davison et al. | Science | 2015
Global analysis finds unexpectedly low endemism among arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and provides evidence of broad geographic distributions among these important plant symbionts.
| Nadejda A. Soudzilovskaia et al. | Global Ecology and Biogeography | 2015
Examines global variation in root colonization by mycorrhizal fungi and identifies climate and soil chemistry as important predictors.
| Wafa Ellouze et al. | BioMed Research International | 2014
Reviews beneficial and pathogenic soil fungi in annual crop systems and considers how crop rotation, plant genotype and management can conserve useful fungal biodiversity.
Soil Fauna, Protists, Nematodes, Earthworms, and Other Soil Organisms
| Hongwei Liu et al. | Global Change Biology | 2026
Experimental study shows that protist diversity and interactions with bacteria, fungi and plants can strongly affect ecosystem multifunctionality during drought.
| Various authors | Nature Ecology & Evolution | 2026
Global analysis of soil animals finds substantial variation in trophic diversity among climatic zones and land-use systems.
| Various authors | Discover Soil | 2026
Reviews the state of soil-biodiversity research in India and identifies major geographic, taxonomic and ecological knowledge gaps.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2025
Finds greater protist diversity in crop and pasture rotations than under continuous rice cultivation and highlights the ecological importance of diversified rotations.
| Various authors | Communications Earth & Environment | 2025
Reports that converting open-field agriculture to greenhouse systems reduces protist phylogenetic diversity and soil multifunctionality, with rare protists playing disproportionate ecological roles.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Shows that surface mulch can stabilize springtail diversity and alter functional composition in wheat agroecosystems.
| Daniel Munyao Mutyambai et al. | European Journal of Soil Biology | 2024
Finds that push-pull intercropping systems in Africa support greater springtail abundance and diversity than conventional cereal production.
| Matteo Brunetti et al. | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Environmental-DNA study finds the greatest invertebrate taxonomic and functional diversity in grasslands compared with intensively cultivated habitats in Italy's Po Valley.
| Jianqing Wang et al. | Global Change Biology | 2023
Finds that nematode abundance, particularly higher trophic groups, helps explain changes in rice agroecosystem multifunctionality under elevated carbon dioxide and ozone.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2023
Multi-city study finds that urbanization homogenizes nematode communities while urban parks retain comparatively high nematode richness.
| Patrick Lavelle et al. | Global Ecology and Biogeography | 2022
Provides a global assessment of macroinvertebrate communities, including earthworms, termites, ants and other animals that regulate decomposition, nutrient cycling and soil structure.
| Sophie Joimel et al. | Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry | 2022
Meta-analysis concludes that springtails are among the soil-fauna groups most sensitive to pesticide exposure, particularly in reproductive responses.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2022
Demonstrates that energy flowing through different nematode trophic levels is strongly associated with agroecosystem multifunctionality.
| Komal A. Chandarana and Natarajan Amaresan | Pedosphere | 2022
Reviews soil protists as predators, nutrient recyclers, plant-growth promoters and potential biological-control agents.
| Baomin Yao, Qing Zeng and Limei Zhang | Biodiversity Science | 2022
Reviews advances in understanding protist diversity, molecular detection, ecological roles and interactions with other components of soil food webs.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2022
Large-scale forest survey finds contrasting geographical patterns among predatory and parasitic soil protists and links them to microbial nutrient mineralization.
| Helen R. P. Phillips et al. | Scientific Data | 2021
Compiles earthworm records from more than 10,000 sites in 60 countries to support global studies of earthworm ecology, biodiversity and environmental change.
| Stela Lazarova et al. | Agriculture | 2021
Reviews nematode functional diversity and explains how different feeding guilds can indicate ecological impacts of agricultural management.
| Johan van den Hoogen et al. | Scientific Data | 2020-03-26
Provides thousands of georeferenced nematode observations spanning continents and biomes for studying soil food webs, environmental drivers and biological activity.
| Various authors | Science of the Total Environment | 2020
Demonstrates that agricultural land use significantly restructures soil protist communities and identifies trophic groups and taxa sensitive to land-use intensity.
| Angus S. A. Johnston and Richard M. Sibly | Oecologia | 2020
Investigates climatic, soil and ecological controls on the abundance and composition of soil animal communities at broad geographic scales.
| Various authors | Nature Communications | 2019
National-scale DNA survey finds that microbial and animal soil diversity respond differently to land-use intensity and soil conditions.
| Stefan Geisen et al. | FEMS Microbiology Reviews | 2018
Reviews the extraordinary diversity of soil protists and their roles as microbial predators, parasites, nutrient recyclers, bioindicators and potential biological-control agents.
| Scott T. Bates et al. | The ISME Journal | 2012-12-13
Surveys soil protists across multiple continents and biomes, revealing enormous diversity and strong relationships between protist community composition and climate.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2001
Experimental manipulation of springtail diversity demonstrates that species identity and community composition can substantially influence decomposition and nutrient flux.
Soil Food Webs, Functional Diversity, and Multitrophic Interactions
| Various authors | Basic and Applied Ecology | 2026
Meta-analysis of bacteria, fungi and nematodes shows that components of the soil micro-food web respond differently to pollution, climate change, atmospheric deposition and biological invasions.
| Various authors | Journal of Sustainable Agriculture and Environment | 2025-02-06
Reviews multitrophic interactions in soil and argues that biodiversity-function studies should incorporate interactions among organisms at multiple trophic levels.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2025
Tests biodiversity-function relationships across several grassland soils and shows that the ecological consequences of greater soil diversity depend partly on soil context and fertility.
| Liliane Ruess et al. | Soil Organisms | 2025
Reviews how functional traits, trophic interactions and mutualisms among microbes and soil fauna support decomposition, aggregation, nutrient cycling and multifunctionality.
| Jiao Feng et al. | Nature Communications | 2024-05-16
Finds that younger and drier ecosystems with relatively low microbial biomass depend especially strongly on soil biodiversity to maintain ecosystem functioning.
| Zhengkun Hu et al. | Nature Communications | 2024-04-03
Long-term field experiment shows that nutrient-driven soil acidification weakens relationships between soil biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality.
| Various authors | Nature Ecology & Evolution | 2024
Grassland and forest biodiversity experiments show that plant diversity enhances ecosystem multifunctionality partly by increasing diversity across multiple trophic groups.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2024
Shows that taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic components of soil biodiversity influence energy storage and energy flow through decomposer food webs.
Reviews more than three decades of soil food-web research, including trophic networks, energy flux, modeling, molecular methods and the relationship between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
| Various authors | Global Change Biology | 2023
Experimental manipulation demonstrates that litter diversity and soil microbial biodiversity independently contribute to ecosystem multifunctionality.
| Carlos Barreto and Zoë Lindo | Pedobiologia | 2022
Reviews soil-biodiversity responses to climate change, land-use alteration, elevated carbon dioxide and changes in aboveground vegetation.
| Rui Yin et al. | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2020
Large-scale analysis concludes that intensive land use threatens soil functional biodiversity and biological quality more strongly than projected climate differences alone.
| Stefan Geisen et al. | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2019
Provides a methodological framework for integrating microbes, protists and animals into comprehensive studies of soil biodiversity.
| Various authors | Nature Communications | 2018
Shows that greater plant diversity can maintain multiple soil functions even under elevated carbon dioxide and nitrogen enrichment.
| Paul Kardol et al. | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2016
Proposes a hierarchical framework separating genetic, taxonomic, functional and trophic diversity when studying how soil organisms provide ecosystem services.
| Susanne Wagg et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2014
Experimental reduction of soil-community diversity impaired decomposition, nutrient retention, plant diversity and other ecosystem functions.
| Amy E. Z. Eisenhauer et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2013
Thirteen-year grassland experiment finds plant diversity has stronger effects on soil food webs than elevated carbon dioxide or nitrogen deposition.
| Various authors | Pedobiologia | 2007
Reviews how soil fauna operate within food webs to regulate decomposition, primary production, nutrient cycling and other fundamental ecosystem processes.
| Various authors | European Journal of Soil Biology | 2002
Reviews soil food-web structure and explains how stable isotopes, fatty-acid biomarkers and molecular techniques can reveal otherwise hidden feeding relationships among soil organisms.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 1998
Examines theoretical and experimental links between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in spatially heterogeneous and changing environments.
Agricultural Management, Organic Farming, Crop Diversity, and Conservation Agriculture
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2026
Compares conservation, organic and conventional systems and finds that reduced disturbance and alternative management can benefit several soil taxa and strengthen food-web interactions.
| Various authors | Nature Sustainability | 2026
Global comparison of conventional and organic croplands evaluates biodiversity across six soil groups together with ecosystem functioning, nutrient availability and crop yield.
| F. Cozim-Melges et al. | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2025-02-28
Systematic review compares effects of alternative agricultural practices on bacteria, fungi, nematodes and earthworms and finds generally neutral-to-positive biodiversity responses.
| Various authors | Global Change Biology | 2025
Global study spanning four continents finds that organic farming can have region-specific benefits for soil biodiversity, particularly in degraded soils under arid climates.
| Gaia Bigiotti et al. | Applied Soil Ecology | 2025
Compares ecological indices for soil microarthropods across European farming systems and explores their usefulness as practical indicators of agricultural soil biodiversity.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Vineyard study finds a consistent negative relationship between pesticide-use intensity and springtail communities while highlighting the importance of soil organic matter.
| M. El Jaouhari, G. Damour and M. Coulis | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Compares organic and conventional banana fields in Martinique to evaluate connections among farming practices, soil macrofauna and litter decomposition.
| Xiangyang Shu et al. | Plants | 2023-11-08
Meta-analysis examines long-term organic fertilization and finds substantial changes in bacterial community composition, strongly mediated by soil pH.
| S. Khatri et al. | Applied Soil Ecology | 2023
Examines long-term organic farming and finds changes in soil bacterial community structure associated with greater biological activity and suppression of fungal plant pathogens.
| Various authors | Science of the Total Environment | 2023
Global meta-analysis investigates how organic amendments restructure soil microbial communities and how these changes relate to soil organic carbon.
| Fiona M. Seaton et al. | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2023
Finds substantial bacterial and fungal heterogeneity within individual agricultural fields, complicating efforts to develop representative microbial soil-health indicators.
| Various authors | Science of the Total Environment | 2022
Meta-analysis of 219 studies finds that organic amendments generally increase soil microbial diversity, microbial functioning and crop yields.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2022
Meta-analysis compares mineral and organic fertilization and finds modest but generally favorable effects of organic inputs on microbial diversity.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2021
Long-term California experiment reports greater soil macrofauna abundance and species richness under cover crops and no-tillage, especially when the practices are combined.
| Andrea Fiorini et al. | Soil & Tillage Research | 2021
Tests cover crops under no-tillage and finds that legume-based mulches can support arthropod and earthworm communities while influencing soil carbon cycling and crop performance.
| Kaile Zhang, Gabriel Maltais-Landry and Hui-Ling Liao | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2021
Reviews how diversified crop rotations strengthen belowground food webs and microbial interactions that regulate carbon cycling and soil organic matter formation.
| Various authors | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2021
Shows that crop-rotation history alters the relationship between microbial biodiversity and multiple soil functions.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2020
Seven-year field experiment finds substantial increases in earthworms and soil-fauna indicators under no-tillage, although responses vary with soil type and cropping system.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2020
Finds that organic systems support greater biodiversity and carbon storage than conventional cropping, while mulch-based organic management provides additional environmental benefits.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2019
Compares organic and conventional smallholder farms in Kajiado and Murang'a counties using soil properties, decomposition measurements and arthropod biodiversity indicators.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2018
Compares soil food webs in Mediterranean vineyards and olive groves and shows that crop type, climate and active conservation measures can matter as much as organic certification.
| Various authors | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2018
Field experiments show that more diverse crop rotations increase microbial metabolic diversity and biological activity.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2017
Shows that winter cover crops can increase the complexity of belowground food webs and differently affect arthropods and nematodes depending on cover-crop type.
| María J. I. Briones and Olaf Schmidt | Global Change Biology | 2017
Global meta-analysis concludes that conventional tillage reduces earthworm abundance and biomass and changes community composition, illustrating the biological cost of intensive soil disturbance.
| Jeffrey S. Buyer et al. | Applied Soil Ecology / USDA Agricultural Research Service | 2017
Examines microbial communities in Peruvian cacao systems and evaluates how agroforestry and cover crops influence soil biological condition and sustainability.
| Martina Lori et al. | PLOS ONE | 2017
Global meta-analysis finds that organically farmed soils generally contain greater microbial biomass and biological activity than conventionally managed soils.
Reviews effects of conventional, conservation and no-tillage systems on earthworms, springtails, mites, enchytraeids, nematodes and microorganisms.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2011
Tests cover crops and surface mulch as tools for restructuring soil food webs, including suppression of plant-feeding nematodes and stimulation of higher trophic groups.
| USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service | USDA NRCS | 2010
Explains how diverse rotations, living roots, cover crops and reduced disturbance feed soil food webs and increase biological diversity and ecosystem function.
| FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | 2003
Describes how crop rotations, green manures, organic fertilizers, reduced chemical inputs and other organic practices can increase biological activity and soil-organism diversity.
Biochar, Manure, Fertilizers, and Organic Amendments
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2026
Finds that organic amendments can reduce microbial-diversity losses associated with chemical fertilizers while increasing microbial network complexity, stability and crop productivity.
| Various authors | Science of the Total Environment | 2024
Global synthesis shows that biochar effects on microbial alpha- and beta-diversity depend on application rate and that bacterial and fungal groups respond differently.
| Yu Xiao et al. | Frontiers in Microbiology | 2024
Examines bacteria, fungi, protists and nematodes in paddy soil and finds that biodiversity within interacting microbial network modules can predict ecosystem multifunctionality.
| Li et al. | Soil Use and Management | 2024
Meta-analysis investigates how biochar feedstock, pH, pyrolysis conditions, application rate and animal body size influence soil-fauna abundance and diversity.
| Various authors | Peer-Reviewed Research | 2024
Shows that feedstock, pyrolysis temperature, amendment dose and soil type can substantially alter bacterial, fungal and plant-associated microbial communities.
| Mingyu Wang et al. | Microorganisms | 2023-03-02
Meta-analysis of 95 publications finds that biochar generally increases bacterial diversity while fungal responses are less consistent and depend strongly on experimental and environmental conditions.
| Various authors | Peer-Reviewed Meta-Analysis | 2023
Synthesizes microbial responses to biochar and identifies experimental duration, feedstock and environmental conditions as important moderators of microbial biomass and community responses.
| European Commission Joint Research Centre | European Commission | 2021-10-05
Summarizes benefits and risks of manure for soil biodiversity, including organic-matter inputs, microbial stimulation, heavy metals, antibiotics and other contaminants.
| Julia Köninger et al. | Agricultural Systems | 2021
Review of more than 400 documents concludes that manure quality can be more important than quantity in determining effects on soil organisms and ecological risks.
Drylands, Grasslands, and Savannas
| Jianyu Wang et al. | CATENA | 2026
Survey across a 4,500-kilometer aridity gradient finds that increasing aridity reduces soil multidiversity, weakens biological associations and reduces soil multifunctionality.
| Various authors | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Finds that plant and bacterial diversity jointly influence ecosystem multifunctionality in restored subtropical grasslands.
| Various authors | Geoderma | 2025
Finds that positive relationships between soil biodiversity and multifunctionality become stronger as dryland ecosystems become increasingly arid.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Finds that mowing, grazing and management intensity interact to produce distinct bacterial and fungal communities in Swiss agricultural grasslands.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2022
Demonstrates that bacteria, fungi, protists and animals respond differently to environmental drivers along a broad aridity gradient.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2022
Links soil-fauna diversity with litter decomposition in the Brazilian Cerrado and shows that rainfall seasonality strongly restructures faunal communities.
| Various authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2022
Compares soil microbial diversity beneath cropland, grazing land and planted forest in the upper Yellow River agro-pastoral region.
| Various authors | Nature Communications | 2021
Shows that plants are particularly important for soil multifunctionality in less-arid drylands while microbial diversity becomes increasingly important under severe aridity.
| Mônica da Silva Santana et al. | Pedobiologia | 2021
Examines how land-use change and seasonal climate affect trophic groups of soil fauna in semiarid ecosystems.
| Gilbert Kamgan Nkuekam, Don A. Cowan and Angel Valverde | South African Journal of Science | 2018
Shows that conversion of South African grassland to arable agriculture changes bacterial and other microbial communities.
Climate Change, Pollution, Wildfire, and Environmental Stress
| Shuo Liu et al. | Nature Reviews Microbiology | 2026-08-13
Argues that conserving plants and animals aboveground does not automatically protect belowground microbial diversity and calls for soil organisms to receive direct conservation attention.
| Yong-Guan Zhu et al. | Nature Reviews Microbiology | 2026-07-31
Reviews effects of heavy metals, pesticides, plastics, PFAS, nanomaterials and other pollutants on microbial diversity, community composition, evolution and ecosystem functioning.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2026
Finds that wildfire lowers bacterial diversity in tropical peat soils while favoring opportunistic microbes involved in phosphorus cycling.
| Yuan Sun et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2025-08-25
Long-term global synthesis concludes that rising temperature is associated with declining soil microbial diversity.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2025
Metagenomic study shows that chaparral wildfire restructures microbial genes involved in pyrogenic-carbon decomposition and nitrogen cycling.
| Various authors | Geoderma | 2025
Shows that soil fauna strengthen positive effects of mixed-species litter on nitrogen release during decomposition in subtropical forest.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2025
Examines how reduced microbial biodiversity changes plant production, decomposition and carbon-substrate use in soils exposed to pesticides.
| Yan Li et al. | Global Change Biology | 2024-12-03
Experimental microbial-diversity gradients show that loss of soil microbial diversity can weaken microbial adaptation to warming and increase climate-related soil-carbon vulnerability.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Finds reductions in soil fauna, microbial populations and biological activity lasting many years after fire in a semiarid ecosystem.
| Various authors | Global Change Biology | 2024
Field experiment evaluates how warming, drought and agricultural intensity interact to reshape energy flow through soil food webs.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2024
Shows that previous environmental-change exposure can modify how soil biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality respond to subsequent warming.
| Various authors | Science of the Total Environment | 2023
Reviews how warming, drought, flooding and land-use change threaten soil organisms and considers management approaches for improving biological resilience.
| Various authors | Microbial Ecology | 2023
Examines protists across dry grasslands and identifies precipitation as a major determinant of diversity and community composition.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2023
Global meta-analysis of more than one hundred studies examines how microbial biomass, respiration and enzyme activity recover after fire.
| Guillaume Patoine et al. | Nature Communications | 2022-07-20
Global modeling indicates that soil microbial biomass carbon declined across many regions between 1992 and 2013, with warming an important driver in northern ecosystems.
| Carlos A. Guerra et al. | Global Ecology and Biogeography | 2021
Forecasts large changes in microbial community composition under future climate and land-use scenarios, including increasing similarity among once-distinct soil microbiomes.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2021
Demonstrates that salvage logging after wildfire alters microbial community structure and can hinder biological recovery of Mediterranean forest soils.
| Stephanie A. Yarwood et al. | U.S. Forest Service | 2020
Reviews biodiversity of forest and rangeland soils, including responses of microbes and soil animals to wildfire, management, disturbance and environmental change.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2020
Mediterranean chronosequences show that microbial biodiversity contributes to recovery of decomposition and nutrient-cycling functions after wildfire.
| Francisco Bastida et al. | Molecular Ecology | 2019
Global analysis evaluates environmental preferences and climatic vulnerabilities among multiple groups of soil invertebrates, helping identify taxa and regions sensitive to climate change.
| Various authors | Soil Biology and Biochemistry | 2019
Canadian boreal-forest study finds increasingly severe wildfire produces progressively greater changes in bacterial and fungal communities.
| Various authors | Proceedings of the Royal Society B | 2019
Tropical-forest experiment finds soil fauna have particularly strong effects on decomposition when soil and litter nutrients are scarce.
| Spyros Sfenthourakis and Elisabeth Hornung | ZooKeys | 2018
Reviews global patterns among terrestrial isopods and considers how changing climate may affect these important decomposers and members of soil and litter communities.
| Grzegorz Buczkowski and Cleo Bertelsmeier | Ecology and Evolution | 2017
Reviews worldwide termite invasions and predicts how warming and globalization may alter distributions of termites that strongly engineer soils and decomposition processes.
| Various authors | Global Change Biology | 2016-11-07
Identifies bacterial and fungal lineages that consistently respond to elevated soil temperatures across laboratory experiments and large geographic gradients.
| Various authors | Global Change Biology | 2013
Global field experiment across six continents demonstrates that soil animals accelerate litter decomposition mainly where temperature and moisture do not strongly constrain biological activity.
Conservation, Restoration, Urban Soils, and Human Well-Being
| Kaiyan Zhai et al. | Forest Ecology and Management | 2026
Finds that plant diversity and soil microbial biodiversity contribute to different components of ecosystem multifunctionality decades after forest restoration.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2025
Reviews European urban-soil research and connects biodiversity conservation with ecosystem services, urban resilience, carbon management and climate adaptation.
| Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo et al. | Nature Ecology & Evolution | 2022
Global study of urban greenspaces across six continents finds that soil biodiversity is positively associated with carbon storage, decomposition, productivity, nutrient cycling and water regulation.
| David J. Eldridge et al. | Journal of Applied Ecology | 2022
Long-term mine-rehabilitation chronosequence shows that different biological and ecosystem attributes recover at substantially different rates.
| Phoebe Weston | The Guardian | 2021-04-16
Explores the immense variety of organisms beneath our feet, the historic neglect of soil biodiversity in conservation and emerging international efforts to systematically monitor soil life.
| Wilian C. Demetrio et al. | Global Change Biology | 2021
Investigates soil macroinvertebrates in human-created Amazonian dark earths and provides insight into long-term relationships between human land use, soil properties and belowground diversity.
| Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo et al. | Nature Ecology & Evolution | 2020
Global observational and experimental evidence shows that bacteria, fungi, protists and invertebrates collectively contribute to nutrient cycling, decomposition, plant production and pathogen regulation.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2020
Uses microbial community diversity and function to evaluate ecological restoration of a coal-mine waste dump.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2020
Compares barren and revegetated metal-contaminated mine wastes and finds greater microbial diversity in vegetated substrates.
| Erin K. Cameron et al. | Conservation Biology | 2019
Shows that biodiversity patterns above and below the soil surface do not necessarily coincide, demonstrating why conservation priorities based solely on visible organisms can miss important soil biodiversity.
| Kelly Hamonts et al. | Applied Soil Ecology | 2017
Examines how reduced grazing, vegetation and coarse woody debris affect bacterial and fungal diversity during restoration of Australian grassy woodland.
| Scientific American | Scientific American | 2016
Accessible overview of the extraordinary biodiversity living beneath the soil surface and the efforts of soil ecologists to connect that biodiversity with food, climate and environmental conservation.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2016
Finds severe reductions in microbial biomass, richness, diversity and enzymatic activity in soils disturbed by coal mining.
| Diana H. Wall, Uffe N. Nielsen and Johan Six | Nature | 2015-11-23
Explores links between soil biodiversity and human health through food, clean water, clean air, disease suppression, environmental exposure and sustainable land management.
| Diana H. Wall | Scientific American | 2014
Explains why mapping soil organisms is necessary for predicting climate-change impacts and argues that belowground species deserve conservation attention comparable to visible plants and animals.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2012
Compares microbial functional profiles in native forest and rehabilitated post-mining soils of different ages.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2009
Chronosequence study tracks microbial biomass, respiration and functional development in reclaimed and naturally regenerating mine soils.
| Various authors | Applied Soil Ecology | 2002
Evaluates microbial fatty-acid biomarkers as biological indicators of recovery following surface-mine reclamation.
