Soil Health is the capacity of soil to function as an ecosystem, providing means to sustain biological productivity and thus to maintain environmental quality. Soil health is negatively impacted by both global change factors (warming, extreme weather events, elevated CO2 levels, droughts, floods, etc.) and human activity (intensive agriculture, technogenic events, etc.). Initial modification to the physical and chemical soil properties can have dramatic effects on soil biota, which is the main driver of all biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nutrients.
We invite contributions from field, laboratory and modeling studies focused on soil health descriptors, such as microbial respiration, enzyme activities, abundance of soil (micro)organisms and other soil biological parameters affected by global change and human activities. This session welcomes contributions on soil health assessment methods, with a focus on biological soil fertility and the ecosystem services provided by soils. We particularly encourage abstracts that explore soil health across scales, from micro-level to global perspectives.