Speaker
Description
Soil organisms regulate essential ecological processes such as nutrient cycling and pest suppression \cite{bardgett2014belowground}, yet much about them is still unknown. At the global scale, soil degradation causes substantial economic losses each year \cite{sutton2016ecological}. Understanding how soil biota responds to land-use and climate change is therefore vital for ecosystem services and long-term soil sustainability.
Despite their importance, the habitats, environmental needs, and climate sensitivity of soil organisms remain poorly understood. This knowledge gap limits our ability to evaluate soil sustainability innovations, assign economic value to soil biodiversity services, and support evidence-based policy. This project addresses these challenges by linking soil biodiversity to ecosystem functioning in Europe.
We analyse European soil biodiversity patterns using ecological niche analysis, combining mathematical modelling, multivariate statistics, and species-distribution modelling with environmental gradients, land-use data, and microbial taxa records. Machine learning reveals environmental structure across land-use types and key gradients shaping soil communities.
Our analyses show clear environmental differences across European land-use categories and ecological strategies from specialists to generalists. This niche-based work forms the basis for a hybrid species-distribution model to predict how soil biodiversity may shift under future climate conditions.
Bibliography
@article{bardgett2014belowground,
title={Belowground biodiversity and ecosystem functioning},
author={Bardgett, Richard D and Van Der Putten, Wim H},
journal={Nature},
volume={515},
number={7528},
pages={505--511},
year={2014},
publisher={Nature Publishing Group UK London}
}
@article{sutton2016ecological,
title={The ecological economics of land degradation: Impacts on ecosystem service values},
author={Sutton, Paul C and Anderson, Sharolyn J and Costanza, Robert and Kubiszewski, Ida},
journal={Ecological Economics},
volume={129},
pages={182--192},
year={2016},
publisher={Elsevier}
}
