A variety of processes being important on the ecosystem scale (e.g. C cycling) are mainly driven by micro-scale interactions between roots, microbiota, organic matter, aqueous solutions, and inorganic particles.
The spatial arrangement of these components as well as the activity of biotic participants induces strong physico-chemical gradients that make soils highly dynamic systems on the micro-scale. Studying the interactions between biota and the harboring soil microenvironment requires analytical approaches capable of resolving processes on the scale of individual soil aggregates or roots down to the molecular scale. This PICO session aims to present the current progress in analyzing biotic and/or abiotic processes in soil and rhizosphere microenvironments with a special focus on imaging techniques and spatio-temporal analyses. Contributions that present state-of-the-art methods to localize, monitor, and quantify gradients and biotic responses in dynamic environments (e.g. rhizosphere) in situ are especially appreciated.