Soils host by far most biodiversity on our planet. This soil biodiversity is essential for other life forms on Earth: plants as holobionts utterly depend on soil microbes to thrive, while other soil organisms drive nutrient cycles from micro to global scales.. Not surprisingly, soil biodiversity has become a ‘hot topic’ in science, as shown in a disproportional rise in often high-quality publications, and also has been raising political interest such as shown by the EU soil monitoring law. We now increasingly understand the diversity, composition and even functional profiles of many taxa in soils. Still, there are many frontiers waiting to be encountered in the field of soil biodiversity.
In this session, we aim to highlight these frontiers to eventually guide future efforts in soil biodiversity studies. We specifically welcome soil biodiversity-linked submissions on theoretical concepts, new methods and approaches, major new insights, but also insights obtained from links with other fields and future visions on the most promising avenues that is foreseen in the soil biodiversity research.