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Soil Biodiversity
Aims and objectives
The major objective of the Soil Biodiversity Programme is to support an integrated programme of research on the biological diversity of soil biota and the functional roles played by soil organisms in key ecological processes.
Targets
- To quantify the taxonomic and metabolic diversity of key groups in the soil biota in a single ecosystem, sufficient to provide a sure basis for an experimental programme to determine the role of diversity in ecosystem processes.
- To extend taxonomic understanding of the soil biota, especially by using isolation and molecular techniques to examine hitherto poorly characterised groups
- To characterise the roles played by all major groups within the soil biota (including root-microbe associations) in ecologically important processes in the carbon and nitrogen cycles in soil, including the development of carbon sinks, so as to determine the pathways and rates of movement of carbon through components of the soil food web.
- To determine (both experimentally and by comparison of contrasting sites) the extent to which depauperation of the soil biota may reduce their ability to perform essential ecosystem services, including the ability to cope with anthropogenic inputs.
- To conduct parallel manipulations of major taxonomic groups of soil biota under controlled conditions.
- To determine the extent to which indicators of soil biodiversity are measures of the soil ecosystem resilience of relevance to land use management.
The research projects used common experimental and identification protocols, allowing a robust test of the generality of the findings.