Global efforts such as the European Union’s LUCAS Soil Survey, the Global Soil Partnership (FAO), Soil BON, the U.S. National Soil Monitoring Network, and regional observatories in Africa, Latin America, and Asia offer valuable insights into the development and implementation of soil health indicators. This session will convene speakers from a range of disciplines—including soil ecology, agronomy, environmental policy, and socioeconomics—as well as representatives from governmental agencies, international organizations, land-user groups, and Indigenous communities. Contributions will explore indicator design, data harmonization, scalability, and integration into global and national environmental assessments. Special attention will be given to how soil health metrics can support decision-making for safeguarding soil biodiversity and the ecosystem services it underpins. We welcome abstracts that address methodological innovations, stakeholder engagement processes, and case studies that demonstrate how soil monitoring translates into meaningful environmental governance.
The assessment of soil health has traditionally focused on physical and chemical parameters, while biological components as the living foundation of soil function and resilience remain underrepresented. As new regulatory frameworks such as the EU Soil Monitoring Law move toward implementation, there is an urgent need for harmonized, science-based approaches to incorporate biological indicators into soil health assessment.
Current soil biodiversity monitoring guidance draws from four major sources: ISO standards, GLOSOLAN, GLOSOB, and Soil BON, including Soil BON Food Web (SBFW), each offering overlapping but uneven coverage of methods. While together these frameworks span most major soil biodiversity variables (microbial diversity and biomass, micro-, meso- and macrofauna, enzymes, respiration, and root traits), they differ extensively in accessibility, scope, and standardization detail, creating barriers to harmonized global monitoring. This methodological fragmentation also limits interoperability and synthesis. Coordinating protocols and metadata standards is essential to enable soil biodiversity to be embedded into global biodiversity observation systems and policy frameworks (e.g. GBIF, GEO BON, IPBES).
To advance comparability and coordination in global soil biodiversity monitoring, we propose integrating existing frameworks into a unified, tiered system that balances scientific rigor with global accessibility. The Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative (GSBI), as a grassroots organization with a mission to provide expert science to inform policy, proposes developing an integrated protocol framework with three tiers: (1) Core open-access methods (e.g., currently available GLOSOLAN protocols and SBFW) accessible to all countries; (2) Intermediate standardized methods aligning GLOSOB and GLOSOLAN with ISO for biodiversity protocols for public release; and (3) Advanced analytical methods (e.g., GLOSOB and Soil BON DNA sequencing) for networks with greater capacity.
Integrating biodiversity metrics into soil health frameworks is not only essential for achieving sustainable soil management but also for aligning global actions under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Sustainable Development Goals. Harmonizing, integrating and linking these initiatives can produce global baselines, long-term data integration, and policy-relevant indicators.
How to cite: Lindo, Z.: Toward a Global Framework for Harmonized Soil Biodiversity Monitoring, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-186, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-186, 2026.
It is well known that some pesticides have a negative impact on bees, birds, insects and even on human health. However, the impact of pesticides on belowground life is still poorly understood. Here we present results from large Swiss, European and Worldwide networks assessing the impact of pesticides on soil biodiversity. We assessed the occurrence of over 100 different pesticides residues in agricultural and natural soils of over 40 countries and we tested for links with a wide range of soil organisms, including fungi and bacteria. Data were obtained from over 60 Swiss vineyards (including both organically and conventionally managed fields), from the LUCAS data-set of the Joint Research Centre of the European Union, spanning over 350 sites in over 25 European countries and over 500 locations from the Global Crop Microbiome and Sustainable Agriculture initiative. The number of pesticides residues found dependend on land use and were highest in agricultural soils were pesticides are regularly applied. However, natural locations such as grassland or forest also often contained traces of pesticides. Using statistical analysis, we observed that pesticides are a major driver of soil biological communities. For some biological groups, pesticides were, after soil properties, the second most important factor explaining richness and community compostion. Pesticides altered microbial functions, including phosphorus and nitrogen cycling and suppressed beneficial taxa, including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (beneficial plant symbionts) and bacterivore nematodes. In Swiss vineyards fungal richness was negatively linked to the number of pesticides. Copper also had a strong influence on microbial community structure in Swiss vineyards and this effect was the same in organic and conventionally managed fields. Interestingyl some soil micro-organisms also responded positively to pesticides, especially those reported having the ability to degrade pesticides and use pesticides as energy (food) source. Overall, this work demonstrates that pesticides have a significant impact on belowground processes and on biodiversity.
How to cite: van der Heijden, M. and the Pesticide - Soil Biodiversity Exploration Team: Pesticides and Soil Biodiversity, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-339, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-339, 2026.
Accurate biodiversity indicators require reliable measurements and consistent interpretation, yet belowground biodiversity remains a major blind spot in global monitoring frameworks. Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing and metabarcoding have improved our capacity to detect soil taxa, but molecular outputs often diverge from morphological assessments, raising uncertainty around indicator development and metric comparability. Within the EU-wide SOB4ES project, we compared molecular and morphological soil-fauna data across multiple European ecosystem types using harmonized DNA-based protocols. Results were integrated with data from EcoFINDERS, SoilService, LUCAS, and Biodiversa+, enabling cross-project evaluation of biodiversity indicators across agricultural, grassland, and woodland systems. We found systematic differences in richness and community composition between molecular and morphological approaches, with molecular datasets frequently detecting higher richness in intensively managed areas. These findings highlight both the diagnostic potential and current limitations of molecular methods when translated into impact metrics or long-term indicators. We identify key steps for developing robust, scalable soil biodiversity indicators, including (i) methodological cross-validation, (ii) standardized sampling and bioinformatic pipelines, and (iii) integrated data platforms combining molecular, morphological, environmental, and land-use information. Refining molecular workflows—such as filtering relic DNA or tracking living biomass—represents a critical step toward metrics that reflect actual ecological function and community dynamics. These lessons contribute directly to ongoing efforts to establish global biodiversity observation systems and policy-relevant soil indicators aligned with the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, EU Soil Strategy for 2030, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and SDGs 2, 13, and 15. Our work showcases how integrating measurement approaches can strengthen biodiversity assessment pipelines—from data collection to indicator development—and ultimately support evidence-based decision-making in conservation and land management. Developing robust soil biodiversity indicators will be key to supporting conservation strategies, maintaining soil health, and safeguarding food security, while enabling global assessment frameworks to better anticipate ecological risks and promote the sustainable use of soils as a foundation for life on Earth.
How to cite: Koninger, J., Beule, L., Tsiafouli, M., Seeber, J., Blasbichler, H., Jose Paulo, S., Martins da Silva, P., Frouz, J., Hedlund, K., Orgiazzi, A., Briones, M. J. I., and Potapov, A.: Building Reliable Soil Biodiversity Metrics: Lessons from European Monitoring Initiatives , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-373, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-373, 2026.
Soil biodiversity remains one of the least documented components of terrestrial ecosystems, largely due to limited taxonomic expertise, major knowledge gaps, and the slow and costly nature of traditional identification methods, compounded by the declining availability of specialists. To address this gap, we conducted two studies across Switzerland to evaluate how high-throughput methods - environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding and artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition - can support the development of soil biodiversity indicators.
We collected soil samples from 320 sites across all biogeographic regions of Switzerland from different established aboveground biodiversity monitoring networks, targeting arthropods for both morphological and eDNA-based analyses. We used metabarcoding to detect and identify the most abundant microarthropods: springtails (Collembola) and mites (Oribatida and Gamasina). Additionally, we prepared a collection of mounted specimens and established a corresponding reference database of long DNA barcodes. In the second study, we digitized the soil arthropod sample collection using a macrophotography imaging system. High-resolution images were used to train deep-learning image recognition models at multiple taxonomic levels and to classify specimens according to morphological traits linked to their degree of adaptation to soil, thereby enabling the derivation of the Soil Biological Quality index (QBS-ar). To further enhance classification performance, we combined machine learning approaches with deep-learning models to optimize image annotation workflows and implemented active learning strategies to efficiently refine training datasets.
We compare the outputs, uncertainties, and methodological constraints of both approaches, emphasizing how these factors influence biodiversity indicators such as richness estimates, community composition, and habitat-specific assemblage patterns. We further assess the advantages and limitations of each method across different operational contexts, ranging from large-scale monitoring schemes to targeted ecological assessments. In addition, we discuss the implications of our findings for future national and international biodiversity monitoring programs, underscoring the discrepancies observed between widely used aboveground indicators - such as vascular plant diversity - and soil arthropod diversity. Our results highlight the importance of systematically integrating soil fauna into ecosystem monitoring frameworks. Finally, we outline key research priorities to improve data integration, strengthen reference databases, and advance the broader implementation of scalable, high-throughput tools for soil biodiversity assessment.
How to cite: Lanz, S., Lentendu, G., Avelino, A., Schneider, C., Bulliard, L., Danz, R., Felber, P., and Mitchell, E. A. D.: Environmental DNA and AI-based automated image recognition for soil fauna monitoring in Switzerland: Case studies, challenges, and perspectives, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-661, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-661, 2026.
Natural rewilding of abandoned agricultural land and proforestation (the practice of leaving existing, mature forests to grow undisturbed and unmanaged) are increasingly promoted as low-cost nature-based solutions for biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation. Yet their outcomes remain debated across scientific, policy, and societal domains. In particular, Europe lacks harmonized, large-scale evidence on how rewilding influences soil biodiversity and its relationship to forest recovery and carbon sequestration. Existing studies are fragmented across regions, methods, and disciplines, leaving, especially, belowground responses insufficiently understood and poorly integrated into environmental monitoring frameworks.
The WILDCARD project, an EU Horizon 2020 initiative, addresses these gaps through a coordinated, cross-European assessment of forest ecosystems undergoing natural succession and proforestation. Using high-throughput DNA metabarcoding of bacterial and fungal ribosomal markers, we characterize soil microbial communities along rewilding gradients spanning from managed croplands to old secondary and primeval forests. Microbial datasets are combined with measurements of forest structure, soil properties, and carbon accumulation trajectories to identify microbial indicators that reflect ecosystem recovery processes.
Among others, we expect to observe belowground recovery patterns along the rewilding gradient, including increases in microbial diversity and network connectivity, which are associated with higher functional complexity and overall ecosystem resilience. Reductions in agroecosystem-associated pathogens and increases in symbiotic and saprotrophic microorganisms are anticipated to enhance nutrient cycling, support forest regeneration capacity, and influence carbon persistence. Exploring these patterns will help determine whether and how rewilding shapes belowground biodiversity, and what implications this may have for long-term ecosystem functioning and carbon stabilization.
By identifying robust microbial indicators linked to forest rewilding and soil carbon dynamics, this work provides a foundation for developing soil health metrics suitable for large-scale monitoring. The resulting bioindicators will strengthen the scientific basis needed to evaluate the contribution of rewilding to EU climate and biodiversity goals and further support evidence-based decision-making in ecological restoration.
How to cite: Cazzaniga, S. G., Feola Conz, R., De Win, Y., Cordeiro Pereira, J. M., Seebach, L., Šamonil, P., Alberti, G., and Hartmann, M.: Microbial Indicators of Soil Health Along Forest Rewilding Trajectories in Europe, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-725, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-725, 2026.
The decline in biodiversity in conjunction with global change poses a severe threat to ecosystem functioning and long-term resilience. Soils host around 60 % of all species on earth, yet our knowledge of soil biodiversity across different land-use types and the drivers of biodiversity change remains limited. Recognizing its importance, several national and international legislative frameworks call for a systematic monitoring and reporting of the biological state of soils, with the goal of assessing, protecting and restoring soil biodiversity and the services it provides. A prominent example is the European Soil Monitoring and Resilience Law (EU 2025/2360), which aims to halt soil biodiversity loss and achieve healthy soils by 2050.
The German Environment Agency (UBA) has launched a high-impact research program in collaboration with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and ten other institutions to advance preparedness in soil biodiversity assessment and evaluation of soil health. The BioDive4Soil project – a large-scale systematic survey of soil biodiversity – aims to assess soil biodiversity across Germany, covering a wide range of habitats, land-use types, and soil regions. By determining the morphological, functional, and molecular diversity of soil microorganisms and fauna, it will establish baseline knowledge of soil community composition. In addition, eDNA-metabarcoding and barcoding of individual species across different soil organism taxa will improve genomic reference databases. Data gathered from near-natural ecosystems and across a gradient of increasing land-use intensity will help defining soil biological reference values indicative of healthy soils, as well as drivers of soil community composition such as land-use management, soil type and pollution.
Currently, UBA relies on indicators derived from case studies in selected regions to fulfil its reporting obligations on soil biodiversity. One central aim is therefore to further develop sensitive and specific indicators for the biological state of soil, allowing, where possible, to discriminate between good, moderate and poor soil health status based on soil biodiversity metrics. The systematics of indicators in the different frameworks also raise questions regarding the long-term availability of consistent data and the definition of target values for soil biodiversity.
How to cite: Pieper, S., Bach, A., Diaz, C., Ebke, P., Eilebrecht, E., Haub, C., Jänsch, S., Kaufmann-Boll, C., Kotschik, P., Ristok, C., Schäfer, I., Schlich, K., Stratemann, L., Toschki, A., Weinfurtner, K., and Roß-Nickoll, M.: BioDive4Soil - A systematic survey of soil biodiversity for soil health evaluation , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-859, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-859, 2026.
Soil biodiversity is remarkably extensive, encompassing a wide range of organisms from microbes to large invertebrates living in the soil and on the soil surface. While the importance of soil organisms for ecosystem functioning is clear, our understanding of how human actions and global changes impact life in and on the soil remains limited. Additionally, we know little about how shifts in community composition, such as those driven by global change, might influence ecosystem processes. This uncertainty highlights the urgent need for broad-scale monitoring efforts. As part of the Biodiversa+ partnership, we are conducting a pilot study on soil biodiversity to support the development of transnational soil biodiversity monitoring.
For this, we are conducting an assessment of soil biodiversity at various broadleaved and coniferous forest sites across ten countries in and around Europe. In accordance with the SoilBON and SoilBON Food Web protocols, we employ pitfall traps and hand-sorting of soil cores to collect soil macro-invertebrates, which are then morphologically identified to the family level and, where feasible, to the species level. Additionally, bulk soil samples are collected for molecular analysis to determine the richness of bacteria, fungi, and invertebrates, enabling a comparison between traditional morphological identification methods and eDNA-based analyses.
To enhance the clarity of our results for the public and stakeholders, we assess essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) and diversity indicators obtained from both traditional species data and molecular data. Examples for indicators derived from morphological species identification include carabid richness, abundance and biomass as well as abundance and diversity of soil macrofauna. An example for a morphology-based EBV is the community biomass of selected functional groups of terrestrial arthropods. When appropriate primers are selected, molecular methods yield data for a wider range of taxa than traditional methods, for instance, all arthropods regardless of their assignment to a specific size group (mesofauna, macrofauna). Consequently, indicators based on molecular data include arthropod diversity, fungal species richness and fungal community composition. In our study, we examine the suitability of these indicators, as well as their respective strengths and limitations, in the context of soil biodiversity monitoring.
How to cite: Seeber, J., Blasbichler, H., Breschi, J., Cabon, M., and Lambrechts, S.: Applicability of soil biodiversity indicators in transnational monitoring schemes, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-84, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-84, 2026.
Healthy soils are the foundation of biodiversity, ecosystem stability, and climate resilience, yet monitoring soil remains fragmented, labor-intensive, and costly, particularly across remote, degraded, or ecologically sensitive landscapes. Understanding soil dynamics is critical for guiding land management and conservation practices, yet conventional soil monitoring methods often fail to capture the temporal and spatial variability needed to inform effective interventions. To address this gap, we introduce Baseliner, a wireless soil monitoring network developed over the course of five years of field deployment, specifically designed to monitor and establish baseline soil health data in the context of land conservation and ecological restoration.
The system provides continuous, high-resolution measurements of key soil parameters, including moisture dynamics, temperature, conductivity, pH, and CO₂ flux. Baseliner integrates low-power, long-range wireless communication technologies (LoRa, 4G cellular, and satellite) with solar-powered, low-maintenance deployment and redundant data backup, ensuring reliable, long-term monitoring even in remote and challenging environments. This robust design allows for near-real-time observation of both rapid and gradual soil processes, capturing critical indicators such as infiltration rates, microbial activity, and nutrient dynamics.
Developed in close collaboration with ecological restoration practitioners and soil scientists, Baseliner reflects interdisciplinary learnings from years of integrating technology with soil ecology. By providing spatially distributed, temporally continuous data, the network supports adaptive management interventions including soil rehydration and hydrology management, while creating a historical baseline to evaluate long-term soil recovery.
We will present a case study illustrating how combining soil restoration practices with continuous monitoring enables practitioners to assess the effectiveness and ecological impact of management actions, improving decision-making, informing policy, and enhancing the long-term stewardship of soil biodiversity. Along the way, we will also present learnings from both successes and failures of the techniques we tried. By bridging the gap between field-based ecological practice and technological innovation, Baseliner provides a scalable, data-driven approach to advancing soil health monitoring and conservation outcomes.
How to cite: Wang, C. A. and Plucinski, J.: Baseliner: Wireless Soil Monitoring to Support Biodiversity and Land Restoration , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-104, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-104, 2026.
Dead organic matter enters the soil, undergoing transformation, decomposition, sequestration, or respiration. These biological processes, along with functions like herbivory, predation, and parasitism, are regulated by soil food webs. Consequently, variations in soil food web structure and function provide insights into the overall dynamics of the soil ecosystem, including various aspects of soil health. We are making initial strides in understanding how soil food webs vary across environmental gradients, which may help establish mechanistic and comprehensive links between soil communities and soil health.
This summary presents several recent projects employing an energy flux approach to explore the development of soil animal food webs and their structural and functional responses to climate and land use. Aligning with classical ecosystem development theory, we showed a progression in soil food webs from fast-turnover systems with high herbivory and predation (the ‘green’ state) to low-turnover systems reliant on detritus consumption (the ‘brown’ state). We observed a similar trend in energy distribution among micro-, meso-, and macrofauna in temperate (Germany, Russia) and tropical forest soil food webs (Vietnam, Indonesia). Our results indicated that tropical food webs have higher energy flux, predation rates, and herbivory, while temperate food webs have higher bacterivory and litter feeding. Additionally, a comparison between forest and agricultural systems in Indonesia and Argentina revealed that land use does not reduce energy flux in soil food webs but significantly restructures energy pathways based on land-use type. Intensively managed systems typically have decreased predation and increased basal consumption, mainly due to earthworm dominance. However, changes in individual trophic functions appear sensitive to specific land use and management practices.
These findings suggest promise for future development of soil food web diagnostic tools to enhance our understanding of functional consequences of ecosystem management on soil health. New technologies, such as AI-assisted image analysis, may enable over 95% automation of this diagnostic process.
How to cite: Potapov, A.: The engine of soil health: Food web functioning and its drivers, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-435, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-435, 2026.
