Soil biota & nutrient cycling

Summary

This review article, published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2020), synthesises current understanding of how soil biological communities underpin nutrient cycling processes in terrestrial systems. Lehmann and colleagues examine the roles of diverse soil organisms — from microbes to macrofauna — in mediating carbon and nutrient transformations, and consider how anthropogenic pressures such as land-use change and agricultural intensification disrupt these functions. The paper is likely to identify knowledge gaps and propose directions for integrating soil biota into land management and Earth system models.

UK applicability

The review's global scope means its mechanistic insights into soil biota and nutrient cycling are broadly applicable to UK agricultural and natural ecosystems; the findings are particularly relevant to UK policy discussions around soil health indicators, the Sustainable Farming Incentive, and efforts to reduce nutrient losses from managed land.

Key measures

Nutrient cycling rates; soil biodiversity metrics; microbial biomass; functional diversity indices; nitrogen and phosphorus transformation pathways

Outcomes reported

The paper reviews how soil biological communities — including bacteria, fungi, fauna and archaea — regulate key nutrient cycles (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and others), examining the mechanisms by which soil biota drive nutrient transformations and losses. It likely synthesises evidence on how land use, management practices and biodiversity loss alter these functions.

Topic tags