Harnessing Soil Microbial Diversity for Sustainable Ecosystem Managementunder Anthropogenic Stress and Climate Change

Soil microbial diversity is central to sustaining ecological processes and soil fertility, as microbial communities mediate nutrient cycling, organic matter decomposition, carbon sequestration, and plant health.Yet, modern ecosystems face increasing pressures from anthropogenic land use, intensive management practices, and climate change-induced stresses, leading to profound shifts in soil microbial communities.Recent research reveals that land-use intensification-from agricultural monocultures to managed urban turfgrass-reshapes microbial compositions and reduces fungal richness relative to unmanaged prairie systems.Meanwhile, climate extremes such as drought, heat, flooding, and freezing drive phylogenetically conserved but functionally significant disruptions ,often reducing microbial metabolic versatility and carbon use efficiency.Soil salinity presents an additional constraint by altering community structure and nutrient cycling functions, favoring halotolerant taxa while reducing microbial biomass and enzyme activity.At the same time, urban soils represent critical but often overlooked ecosystems where microbial diversity responses closely link with soil health indicators such as organic matter, nutrient availability, and pH.This review integrates findings on soil microbialdynamics under diverseanthropogenic and environmental stressors, while exploring recent advances in metagenomic technologies, spectral imaging combined with machine learning for soil fertility prediction, and microbiome engineering approaches.We argue that fostering microbial diversity, enhancing ecosystem multifunctionality, and deploying emerging technologies are pivotal for sustainable agricultural and urban land management strategies under accelerating global change.