Soil and Biodiversity
Biodiversity is “the variety of life: the different plants, animals and micro-organisms, their genes and the ecosystems of which they are a part” (Department of the Environment and Water Resources, 2007). Biodiversity and soil are strongly linked – soil is the medium for a large variety of organisms and interacts closely with the wider biosphere; conversely, biological activity is a primary factor in the physical and chemical formation of soils (Bardgett, 2005).
Soil provides a vital habitat – primarily for microbes including bacteria and fungi; also for microfauna such as aprotozoa and nematodes; mesofauna such as microarthropods and enchtraeids; and macrofauna such as earthworms, termites and millipedes (Bardgett, 2005). The primary role of soil biota is to recycle organic matter that is derived from the “above-ground plant-based food web”.
Soil is in close cooperation with the wider biosphere - the maintenance of fertile soil is “one of the most vital ecological services the living world performs”; the “mineral and organic contents of soil must be replenished constantly as plants consume soil elements and pass them up the food chain” (Baskin, 1997).
The correlation of soil and biodiversity can be observed spatially – for example, both natural and agricultural vegetation boundaries correspond closely to soil boundaries, even at continental and global scales (Young & Young, 2001).
Read more about this topic: Soil Biodiversity
Famous quotes containing the words soil and and/or soil:
“If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There will be mud on the carpet tonight
and blood in the gravy as well.
The wifebeater is out,
the childbeater is out
eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)