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Soil Biodiversity
Programme background
Investigating life in soil, and how soil organisms affect ecological processes.
Soils are teeming with life, including bacteria, fungi, nematodes, springtails and mites, earthworms, slugs and beetles. Soil organisms break down pollutants, recycle nutrients and produce and consume trace gases that regulate climate. They help create the very structure of soil.
The programme:
- investigated how carbon flows through soils
- studied the diversity and functions of soil organisms
- developed new techniques and methods to advance our scientific understanding of soils
The research will help us:
- develop biological indicators for soil quality
- provide more realistic assessments of environmental impacts and changes
- assess impacts of contaminants
- understand how climate change will affect carbon turnover in soils, and research ways of capturing and storing carbon
- develop sustainable grassland management systems