Reviving Soil Biodiversity in Agricultural Land

The biodiversity of soils – from microorganisms to megafauna – supports multiple essential ecosystem services, such as food production and the regulation of soil and water quality. Climate change, land use intensification, and pollution, among other drivers, however pose a severe threat to soil organisms and can lead to the degradation of soils, especially in arable land. Hence, identifying these, often man-made, pressures and finding solutions for the sustainable management of soils can be considered one of the most important challenges of the 21st century. As part of the German Biodiversity Assessment (‘Faktencheck Artenvielfalt’) a group of experts summarized the available knowledge, combined with expert opinion, on the state and role of soil biodiversity in Germany. Here, we highlight past and current land use practices in agricultural ecosystems and demonstrate how various management measures affect different soil taxa. We discuss avenues of sustainable soil management, in particular different tillage regimes, organic amendments, and crop rotation, with regard to fostering soil biodiversity. We point out that any management measure must consider the local context, in particular regarding soil properties and climatic conditions, including their variability in space and time. Our results demonstrate that soil biodiversity is an integral but harmed part of arable ecosystems and summarize current and future best management practices, with a focus on Germany and comparable countries.