Integrating Soil Biodiversity to Ecosystem Services (SOB4ES)
Project context ¶
The aim of the EU’s Soil health and Food Mission is that by 2030 at least 75% and by 2050 all soils in the EU should be fertile. However, cost-effective indicators for soil biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem services are missing, and so are costeffective measures for restoring soil fertility. SOB4ES will contribute to the Missions’ Soil Deal for Europe by (1) elucidating soil biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and services for major land uses and land use intensity changes, (2) testing cost-effectiveness of existing indicators for soil biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and services, and (3) evaluating how policy incentives may enhance protection, sustainable management and restoration of soil systems and soil fertility. By focusing on nine major pedoclimatic (soil type-climate) regions and land uses, including soils from urban, agriculture, forest, (semi)-natural, wetlands, drylands, industrial and mining environments, SOB4ES will cover most relevant EU climate-soil type-land use conditions. To reach these ambitious goals, SOB4ES will further develop the mapping and assessment of ecosystem conditions approach and test cost-effectiveness of a wide array of existing indicators.
Aim of the project ¶
The SOB4ES project is a large EU project including 19 european partners. The main goal of the project is to assess the composition of soil organisms and to understand its relationship with ecosystem services across land uses of different pedoclimatic regions. The project aims to improve the evaluation of the ecosystem by including soil biodiversity into the monitoring of the ecosystems.
Within the SOB4ES project, a large quantity of samples will be samples in different European countries to fill out the current knowledge gap about the effectiveness of existing indicators variables for the composition and community structure of soil biodiversity under combinations of different land use and pedoclimatic regions. SOB4ES will also analyse how networks of soil biodiversity relate to aboveground biodiversity and ecosystem services by advanced artificial intelligence-based machine learning approaches, and scale monitoring up to being applied by remote sensing.
Sampling strategy ¶
In each pedoclimatic region (i.e. participating country), soil samples from 3 main land-use types (Forest, Grassland and Arable land) of different land-use intensities (e.g. intensive, extensive and conserved grassland) will be collected (see scheme below). In addition, several other land-use type, such as restoration sites, wetlands or urban soils will also be sampled in each country.
One soil sample will consist of 5-6 soil cores of 5 cm diameter and 10 centimeter long, all collected within 1 square meter. In addition, earthworms will be sampled by hand sorting in one cube of 25cm x 25 cm x 25 cm. All partners across Europe are using the same sampling protocols.
Soil biodiversity assessment ¶
From the soil samples, we will extract and quantify the soil mesofauna (mites and collembola), nematodes, enchytreids, fungi and bacteria using classical identification counting and DNA metabarcoding methods. We will also measure various physico-chemical soil properties and soil functions (soil respiration, potential extracellular enzymes and functional genes involved in the C and N cycles). While the extraction of these soil organisms will be done by each partners, their speciation will be done by a specific partner, specialized in a taxonomic group, who processes all samples from all partners. In that way, comparisons among pedoclimatic zones, land-use and land-use intensities will be feasible.
Official website ¶
Publications ¶
Anthony M.A., Tedersoo L., De Vos B., Croisé L., Meesenburg H., Wagner M., … Averill C. (2024) Fungal community composition predicts forest carbon storage at a continental scale. Nat. Commun. 15, 2385 (13 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46792-wInstitutional Repository DORA
Cuartero J., Frey B., Eder R., Brunner I. (2024) More than a decade of irrigation alters soil nematode communities in a drought-prone Scots pine forest. Appl. Soil Ecol. 203, 105621 (10 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2024.105621Institutional Repository DORA
Cuartero J., Querejeta J.I., Prieto I., Frey B., Alguacil M.M. (2024) Warming and rainfall reduction alter soil microbial diversity and co-occurrence networks and enhance pathogenic fungi in dryland soils. Sci. Total Environ. 949, 175006 (15 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.175006Institutional Repository DORA
Donhauser J., Briones M.J.I., Mikola J., Jones D.L., Eder R., Filser J., … Frey B. (2023) Extracting DNA from soil or directly from isolated nematodes indicate dissimilar community structure for Europe-wide forest soils. Soil Biol. Biochem. 185, 109154 (16 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2023.109154Institutional Repository DORA
Frey B., Moser B., Tytgat B., Zimmermann S., Alberti J., Biederman L.A., … Risch A.C. (2023) Long-term N-addition alters the community structure of functionally important N-cycling soil microorganisms across global grasslands. Soil Biol. Biochem. 176, 108887 (11 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2022.108887Institutional Repository DORA
Frey B., Maurer C., Schneider K. (2023) Informationen zum Boden anhand der Gebundenheit der Rote-Liste Arten BAFU. Bundesamt für Umwelt BAFU. 26 p. Institutional Repository DORA
Frey B., Rast B.M., Qi W., Stierli B., Brunner I. (2022) Long-term mercury contamination does not affect the microbial gene potential for C and N cycling in soils but enhances detoxification gene abundance. Front. Microbiol. 13, 1034138 (18 pp.). https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.1034138Institutional Repository DORA
Guidi C., Frey B., Brunner I., Meusburger K., Vogel M.E., Chen X., … Hagedorn F. (2022) Soil fauna drives vertical redistribution of soil organic carbon in a long‐term irrigated dry pine forest. Glob. Chang. Biol. 28(9), 3145-3160. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16122 Institutional Repository DORA
Robinson S.I., O’Gorman E.J., Frey B., Hagner M., Mikola J. (2022) Soil organic matter, rather than temperature, determines the structure and functioning of subarctic decomposer communities. Glob. Chang. Biol. 28(12), 3929-3943. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16158 Institutional Repository DORA
Frey B., Walthert L., Perez-Mon C., Stierli B., Köchli R., Dharmarajah A., Brunner I. (2021) Deep soil layers of drought-exposed forests harbor poorly known bacterial and fungal communities. Front. Microbiol. 12, 674160 (21 pp.). https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2021.674160Institutional Repository DORA
Gschwend F., Hartmann M., Hug A.S., Enkerli J., Gubler A., Frey B., … Widmer F. (2021) Long-term stability of soil bacterial and fungal community structures revealed in their abundant and rare fractions. Mol. Ecol. 30(17), 4305-4320. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.16036 Institutional Repository DORA
Gschwend F., Hartmann M., Mayerhofer J., Hug A.S., Enkerli J., Gubler A., … Widmer F. (2022) Site and land-use associations of soil bacteria and fungi define core and indicative taxa. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. 97(12), 165 (14 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiab165Institutional Repository DORA
Resch M.C., Schütz M., Buchmann N., Frey B., Graf U., van der Putten W.H., … Risch A.C. (2021) Evaluating long-term success in grassland restoration: an ecosystem multifunctionality approach. Ecol. Appl. 31(3), e02271 (14 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2271Institutional Repository DORA
Resch M.C., Schütz M., Ochoa-Hueso R., Buchmann N., Frey B., Graf U., … Risch A.C. (2022) Long-term recovery of above- and below-ground interactions in restored grasslands after topsoil removal and seed addition. J. Appl. Ecol. 59(9), 2299-2308. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14145 Institutional Repository DORA