Animals are an integral part of the biosphere within the Earth system and a growing body of evidence suggests that, despite their small biomass compared to plants and microbes, the animals in terrestrial and aquatic biomes are important geoengineers of both the physical and chemical environment. Animals are involved in physical and chemical processes relevant for ecosystems at local and regional level and even at the planetary level. The role of animals are understudied as is reflected in Earth System Models, in which the biosphere and its interaction with the surrounding environment is largely represented by plants and microbes.
However, reintroducing large animals to restore ecosystem functioning and climate regulation and resilience, known as trophic rewilding, has become a global agenda, but knowledge on the direct and indirect effects of animals on the geophysical and chemical environment is scarce.
To address this, we invite contributions that study how animals shape Earth system processes. We welcome contributions across disciplines (ecology, geoscience), ecosystem types (terrestrial, aquatic), scales (field, ecosystem, planetary) and methodological approaches (field-based/lab-based, observational/experimental, modeling) that shed light on the role of animals in the Earth system from as many angles as possible. This could, for example, include how animals impact the physical environment through landscape (zoogeomorphology, e.g. beaver pond formation) and soil formation (e.g. bioturbation) or transformation and mediation of biogeochemical cycles (zoogeochemistry, e.g. carbon and nutrient cycling) through herbivore-plant-soil interactions.
With this session we want to spark interest in the broader geoscientific community of the intrinsic interaction of animals and earth system functioning and to shape the development of the emerging discipline of zoogeoscience.