The contribution of soil organisms to ecosystem service provision remains poorly quantified. Indeed, soil fauna shape soil hydrology and biogeochemical cycling through bioturbation, pore formation, faeces production, vertical redistribution of organic matter and mucus secretion. While providing ecosystem services, such as erosion control, nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration, their activity can also generate disservices, for example by stimulating greenhouse gas emissions.
This session aims to bring together researchers investigating how the functional diversity of soil macro- and meso-fauna shapes soil processes and ecosystem services across scales, from individual species at microscale to communities at ecosystem scale. We particularly encourage contributions that use of measurable functional traits and bioturbation activities to quantify faunal effects on soil functioning. We invite studies addressing how soil fauna by pore formation, faeces production and vertical mixing influences soil organic carbon storage, water infiltration and retention, nutrient cycling and other ecosystem functions.
Moreover, the session will address the challenge of scaling faunal effects from controlled experiments to field conditions. We welcome approaches combining community composition, functional diversity, bioturbation measurements and soil properties with observations of ecosystem services across contrasting environments. Studies from both temperate and tropical systems are welcome to explore how environmental context modifies the relationships between soil fauna activity and ecosystem service provision.
We also invite contributions addressing the representation of faunal activity in soil carbon and water dynamic models, the development of indicators of fauna-mediated ecosystem functioning, or the quantitative and spatial assessment of ecosystem services provided by soil fauna.
By bringing together soil ecologists, biogeochemists, soil physicists, modellers and ecosystem-service researchers, the session seeks to advance a mechanistic and quantitative understanding of how soil fauna communities contribute to soil functioning. Linking measurable organismal functions to ecosystem services will provide a basis for incorporating soil biodiversity into ecosystem assessments, soil process models and sustainable land-management strategies.