Managing soil biodiversity and ecosystem services in agroecosystems across Europe under climate change

Humans depend on agriculture and agriculture depends on soil organisms. Soil organisms provide fundamental ecosystem services in agriculture such as decomposition and mineralisation, that make nitrogen and phosphorous available for crop uptake. Agricultural intensification reduces the diversity of soil organisms with consequences for the provision of ecosystem services from agricultural soils. In the future, the provision of soil ecosystem services will be impacted by a changing climate and its interactions with management practices. SOILCLIM addresses the pressing need to better predict consequences of climate change on soil biodiversity and ecosystem services in agroecosystems.

SOILCLIM is a BiodivERsA project and is a collaboration between research groups in five European countries; Sweden, Germany, Estonia, Switzerland and Spain.