Soil Ecology and Ecosystem Services
Diana H. Wall, Richard D. Bardgett, Valerie Behan-Pelletier, Jeffrey E. Herrick, T. Hefin Jones, Karl Ritz, Johan Six, Donald R. Strong, and Wim H. van der Putten
Abstract
Soils and their biodiversity are currently being degraded at a rapid pace due to human activities. However, despite sitting at the foundation of human and ecosystem sustainability, soils are often ignored in scientific discussions of global issues. This book synthesizes current knowledge on soil ecosystem services, and provides a basis for the maintenance of soil health and sustainability. It begins by examining the living soil as a habitat in terms of biodiversity, functions, and ecosystem services. Soil ecosystem services are explored and explained at different scales from genes of microbes ... More
Soils and their biodiversity are currently being degraded at a rapid pace due to human activities. However, despite sitting at the foundation of human and ecosystem sustainability, soils are often ignored in scientific discussions of global issues. This book synthesizes current knowledge on soil ecosystem services, and provides a basis for the maintenance of soil health and sustainability. It begins by examining the living soil as a habitat in terms of biodiversity, functions, and ecosystem services. Soil ecosystem services are explored and explained at different scales from genes of microbes to whole ecosystems. The book discusses the importance of biodiversity to ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services with regards to phylogeny, biogeography, and diversity of important soil fauna groups, from microbes to large ecosystem engineers. The influence of global environmental changes such as climate change, nutrient enrichment, urbanization, and land use change, and their effect on soils and ecosystem services, are discussed. Finally, the book outlines how sustainability of soils, biodiversity, and ecosystem services can be monitored, maintained, and restored, and how humans, other animals, and ecosystems are dependent on living soils and ecosystem services.
Keywords:
biodiversity,
ecology,
ecosystem services,
environmental degradation,
global scale,
micro scale,
regional scale,
soil,
sustainability
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199575923 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2013 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199575923.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Diana H. Wall, editor
Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, USA
Richard D. Bardgett, editor
University of Manchester, UK
Valerie Behan-Pelletier, editor
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada
Jeffrey E. Herrick, editor
USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, USA
T. Hefin Jones, editor
Cardiff University, UK
Karl Ritz, editor
Cranfield University, UK
Johan Six, editor
University of California, Davis, USA
Donald R. Strong, editor
University of California, Davis, USA
Wim H. van der Putten, editor
The Netherlands Institute of Ecology, The Netherlands
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