Soil biota and their ecosystem services as main drivers of soil sustainability still need to come more into focus in both society (awareness) and science (understanding processes and interactions). Moreover, monitoring of soil biodiversity is needed to track long term impacts of land use and climate change on soil health mediated by soil biota.
Although land use and agricultural production heavily relies on multiple processes driven by soil organisms, soil biodiversity has rarely been considered when shaping farming systems and European agricultural policy. At the same time, there is growing awareness worldwide that soil health and biodiversity are interdependent and that reductions in soil biodiversity make soils more vulnerable to degradation processes (IPBES 2018, FAO and OECD 2018). The Sustainable Development Goal number 2 calls for implementing agriculture practices that improve resilience and health of soils to ensure sustainable food production systems by 2030. In order to find solutions for increasing soil sustainability and resilience across Europe, the scientific discussions on agricultural management, its impact and use on soil biota to improve soil status and health are essential. This session aims to focus on soil biota (1) as provider of services and key actors to get towards sustainable systems in land use with high self-regulating power, (2) on supporting and detracting practices of land use on soil biota to enable valuation of systems in terms of their soil biodiversity impact and (3) on methods and tools to improve soil biodiversity monitoring.