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Soil ecosystem services (SES) are the benefits that humans derive from soil. These services emerge from the complex interactions between biotic and abiotic processes within soil systems. They are vital for maintaining ecosystem resilience and ensuring long-term sustainability. Soil hosts a diverse group of biota, among them fungi play a crucial role in supporting and enhancing SES due to their remarkable adaptability and ability to thrive under unfavorable conditions. This review explores the multifaceted roles of fungi in SES, emphasizing their growing importance in strengthening ecosystem resilience and climate change adaptation. Fungi significantly contribute to the key ecosystem processes such as soil aggregation, organic matter (OM) decomposition, nutrients cycling, plant productivity, and carbon (C) sequestration. However, potential threats to fungal abundance and diversity could undermine these critical functions, highlighting the need for proactive measures to preserve fungal communities. The pivotal role of fungi in SES, including agricultural production and climate regulation, tailor them as indispensable microbial engines that shape and maintain ecosystem resilience. Emerging evidence suggests that soil fungal communities may become increasingly prominent under the future climate scenarios. Thus, understanding how fungal functional roles evolve in response to climate change is emergent for safeguarding SES and ensuring environmental sustainability. Furthermore, the co-occurrance of fungi with other soil organisms in supporting SES highlights the need to integrate diverse soil biota alongside fungi to promote sustainable SES. Collaborative efforts to comprehend and manage soil microbial communities are imperative for maintaining the long-term ecological stability of ecosystems.

Diversification enhances nature-based contributions to cropping system functions. Soil management to improve production and ecosystem function has variable outcomes. Management of the production-system to use legacy nutrients will reduce inputs. Intercrops, companion crops and cover crops improve ecological sustainability. Sustainable interventions within value chains are essential to future-proof agriculture. To achieve the triple challenge of food security, reversing biodiversity declines plus mitigating and adapting to climate change, there is a drive to embed ecological principles into agricultural, value-chain practices and decision-making. By diversifying cropping systems at several scales there is potential to decrease reliance on inputs, provide resilience to abiotic and biotic stress, enhance plant, microbe and animal biodiversity, and mitigate against climate change. In this review we highlight the research performed in Scotland over the past 5 years into the impact of the use of ecological principles in agriculture on sustainability, resilience and provision of ecosystem functions. We demonstrate that diversification of the system can enhance ecosystem functions. Soil and plant management interventions, including nature-based solutions, can also enhance soil quality and utilization of legacy nutrients. Additionally, this is facilitated by greater reliance on soil biological processes and trophic interactions. We highlight the example of intercropping with legumes to deliver sustainability through ecological principles and use legumes as an exemplar of the innovation. We conclude that there are many effective interventions that can be made to deliver resilient, sustainable, and diverse agroecosystems for crop and food production, and these may be applicable in any agroecosystem.

Earthworms commonly occur within the soil. They alter physico-chemical and biological regimes of the soil through their activities, such as burrowing, casting, feeding and propagating, and therefore are known as 'ecosystem engineers'. Through their activities, they provide a number of ecosystem services which are ecologically and socio-economically important. This article reviews the role of earthworms in improving soil structural and functional properties, which serves as key determinants of soil ecosystem services and economic benefits for the farmers. A methodology of economic evaluation of the agro-ecosystem services provided by earthworms has been demonstrated. Further, the information gaps and future research have been discussed for ensuring sustainable agro-ecosystems management.

The analysis of the functional diversity of soil nematodes requires detailed knowledge on theoretical aspects of the biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationship in natural and managed terrestrial ecosystems. Basic approaches applied are reviewed, focusing on the impact and value of soil nematode diversity in crop production and on the most consistent external drivers affecting their stability. The role of nematode trophic guilds in two intensively cultivated crops are examined in more detail, as representative of agriculture from tropical/subtropical (banana) and temperate (apple) climates. The multiple facets of nematode network analysis, for management of multitrophic interactions and restoration purposes, represent complex tasks that require the integration of different interdisciplinary expertise. Understanding the evolutionary basis of nematode diversity at the field level, and its response to current changes, will help to explain the observed community shifts. Integrating approaches based on evolutionary biology, population genetics and ecology can quantify the contribution of nematode fauna to fundamental soil functions. These include carbon transformation, nutrient cycling, pest control and disease transmission. In conclusion, different facets of nematode diversity such as trophic groups, life history traits, variability in body size and/or taxa identities in combination with DNA-based techniques are needed in order to disclose nematode–soil–ecosystem functioning relationships. Further experimental studies are required to define locally adapted and sustainable management practices, through ecosystem-based approaches and nature-based solutions.

Land use changes cause soil degradation and loss of biodiversity, thereby affecting ecological processes and soil-associated ecosystem services. However, land use change impacts on soil health have received little attention in the highland landscapes of the tropics. In this research, using the soil health framework, we assessed the impact of native forest conversion to anthropic systems (planted forests, pastures, and monocultures) on two ecosystem services: biodiversity conservation and soil fertility in the highlands of northern Ecuador. The biological dimension of our assessment focused on the diversity, abundance, and biomass of soil macroinvertebrate communities as proxies to soil functions, whereas soil chemical parameters were used to describe the soil fertility. The soil invertebrate communities and soil chemical parameters were studied in topsoil samples using 25 × 25 × 10 cm monoliths, obtained from 10 sampling sites randomly selected in each land use category. We hypothesized that native forests would present more diverse and even soil macroinvertebrate communities, and together with their soil chemical properties would indicate better soil quality than anthropic environments. Our results showed that the structure and composition of the edaphic macroinvertebrate communities significantly differed among the studied land use categories. As predicted, native forests presented greater values for richness, evenness and diversity of soil biota than did the other categories, demonstrating a significant loss of taxonomic biodiversity at order and genus levels. We also found a significant reduction of trophic diversity in native forests converted to anthropic environments. More trophic groups with greater abundances were found in native forests, where predators and detritivores stood out as dominant groups, indicating the good quality of the soil. The results from the soil chemical parameters also confirmed the distinction in soil health between native forests and anthropic environments. Our results highlight the risk associated with current trends of native forest loss and conversion to anthropic systems in high mountain ecosystems in the tropics, illustrating how these alterations could cause biodiversity loss and degradation of the chemical attributes of soil health. The findings of this research could contribute to the conservation and sustainable management of mountain agricultural landscapes in the study region.

Landscape dynamics result from forestry and farming practices, both of which are expected to have diverse impacts on ecosystem services (ES). In this study, we investigated this general statement for regulating and supporting services via an assessment of ecosystem functions: climate regulation via carbon sequestration in soil and plant biomass, water cycle and soil erosion regulation via water infiltration in soil, and support for primary production via soil chemical quality and water storage. We tested the hypothesis that patterns of land-cover composition and structure significantly alter ES metrics at two different scales. We surveyed 54 farms in two Amazonian regions of Brazil and Colombia and assessed land-cover composition and structure from remote sensing data (farm scale) from 1990 to 2007. Simple and well-established methods were used to characterize soil and vegetation from five points in each farm (plot scale). Most ES metrics were significantly correlated with land-use (plot scale) and land-cover (farm scale) classifications; however, spatial variability in inherent soil properties, alone or in interaction with land-use or land-cover changes, contributed greatly to variability in ES metrics. Carbon stock in above-ground plant biomass and water infiltration rate decreased from forest to pasture land covers, whereas soil chemical quality and plant-available water storage capacity increased. Land-cover classifications based on structure metrics explained significantly less ES metric variation than those based on composition metrics. Land-cover composition dynamics explained 45 % ( P  < 0.001) of ES metric variance, 15 % by itself and 30 % in interaction with inherent soil properties. This study describes how ES evolve with landscape changes, specifying the contribution of spatial variability in the physical environment and highlighting trade-offs and synergies among ES.

The usefulness of the soil quality index (SQI) as a tool to evaluate management options has mostly been studied within the boundaries of a crop or experimental field, calling for the need to enhance its utility in regional-scale soil health assessment. Thus, four quantitative approaches for computing the SQI were evaluated with samples collected from 0 to 15 and 15 to 30 cm depths at 156 points from the Trans-Gangetic Plains of North India. Principal component analysis (PCA) and soil function (SF)-based approaches were used to select the minimum dataset from 18 soil parameters and assign weights to key indicators. In both approaches, two different data transformation methods were followed: 1) routine method with maximum or minimum values of indicator parameters and 2) percentile method with the 90th or 10th percentile value as the denominator or numerator for “more is better” and “less is better” scoring functions, respectively. The PCA output with factor loadings from the varimax rotation showed six principal components accounting for 75% of the total variance, with PC1 explaining the highest variance (26.8%) followed by PC2 (16%). The SF-based approach was better than PCA in terms of a higher correlation of SQI with rice and wheat yields. The percentile method showed a higher correlation in both PCA and SF methods. The SQI computed from 0 to 30 cm soil data did not show any superiority over that from 0 to 15 cm soil. Thus, the soil function–based approach with the percentile method of data transformation proved better to compute the SQI and establish a relationship with production function.

Soil degradation in Europe is mostly represented by soil erosion that, as a sediment production mechanism, is the main environmental threat to many watersheds, including the Bovilla watershed (Tirana), useful for the supply of drinking water to the city, and therefore, the care of water quality is of particular interest. The soil erosion of the Bovilla watershed was monitored in a work set up in June 2017. Following this work, this research updates the previous data on soil loss at the Bovilla watershed in t/ha/year to September 2019 and focuses on the identification and monetary evaluation of the ecosystem services (ESs) linked to soil erosion (loss of carbon, loss of mineral elements, habitat quality, crop productivity, and sustainable tourism suitability). Then, we applied the replacement cost analysis to test the economic convenience and suggest the adoption of sustainable land management practices (e.g., reforestation) able to improve the quality water in this watershed. The study carried out demonstrates that the values of soil lost due to erosion vary depending on the type of land use (ranging from average values of 120.32 t/ha for bare land to values of 8.16 t/ha for wooded areas). Furthermore, from the application of monetary methods for the evaluation of some ecosystem services linked to erosion (loss of carbonaceous and mineral elements, habitat quality, productivity, suitability for sustainable tourism), it clearly emerges that the value of the productivity of agricultural crops varies from EUR 0 to 35,320.50/ha and that the service represents a more incisive service than the previous ones, so much so as to make the conversion of some agricultural land with high productivity values into wooded areas economically disadvantageous. The data from this study may help to develop Bovilla watershed management strategies for erosion and pollution control and sediment remediation mainly in agricultural lands. A program of measures can be effective for controlling soil erosion, but it must be implemented over long time frames, and it requires relevant investments from the public and private sectors, also with a view to increase the allocation of economic values of monetary compensation aimed at those who decide to start forestation projects on highly productive soils.

Soil provides a diverse and complex range of ecosystem services. Understanding the trade-offs and synergies among soil functions is foundational for effective soil ecosystem management and human well-being. In contrast, the long-term pursuit of solely productive functions in cultivated land use has resulted in soil degradation and weakened other ecological functions. This study collected soil, topographic landform, climate, and management data from 151 fields in four counties and three climatic zones in China. The Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model was used to evaluate nutrient retention, water production, and carbon storage, and the market value method was used to evaluate the value of the soil production function. A semi-quantitative model of Bayesian belief networks (BBNs) was used to simulate soil processes, thus revealing factors potentially influencing the supply capacity of five soil functions. Sensitivity analysis was used to identify the key variables influencing soil functional supply, and the probabilistic inference was used to identify interactions among soil’s multiple functions. The main findings were as follows: 1) In four counties, the spatial heterogeneity in the supply of the five soil functions was relatively high. 2) The primary variables influencing the supply of soil’s multiple functions were climatic conditions, management level, carbon storage, soil nutrients, soil biology, soil structure, and topography. 3) Trade-offs existed among primary productivity (PP), water purification and regulation (WPR), and carbon sequestration and regulation (CSR). Moreover, the provision of functional and intrinsic biodiversity (PFIB), WPR, and CSR were synergistic; specifically, the CSR and WPR services synergized with the nutrient provision and cycling (PCN). This research may aid in understanding the supply of, and interactions among soil’s multiple functions, thus aiding in using BBNs to analyze soil ecosystem services. In addition, this study may provide a reference for management decision-making to maximize the overall benefits of soil functions in cultivated land use.

Urbanisation and land-use change are among the main pressures on soil health in periurban areas, but the multifunctionality of grassland soils is still not sufficiently recognised. In this study, the physical and chemical properties of soils under grassland, forest and croplands in the periurban area of Zagreb were investigated in a two-year period. Grasslands consistently exhibited multifunctional benefits, including high organic matter content (4.68% vs. 2.24% in cropland), improved bulk density (1.14 vs. 1.24 g cm−3) and an active carbon cycle indicated by increased CO2 emissions (up to 1403 kg ha−1 day−1 in 2021). Forest soils showed the highest aggregate stability (91.4%) and infiltration (0.0006 cm s−1), while croplands showed signs of structural degradation with the highest bulk density and lowest water retention (39.9%). Temporal variation showed that grassland was particularly responsive to favourable climatic conditions, with soil porosity and water content improving yearly. Principal component analysis showed that soil structure, biological activity and moisture regulation were linked, with grassland plots favourably positioned along the axes of resilience. The absence of tillage and the presence of permanent vegetation cover contributed to their high capacity for climate and water regulation and carbon sequestration. These results emphasise the importance of protecting and managing grasslands as an important component of urban green areas. Practices such as mulching, minimal disturbance and continuous cover can maximise the ecosystem services of grassland soils. In addition, the results highlight the potential risk of trace metal accumulation in cropland and grassland soils located near urban and farming infrastructure, underlining the need for regular monitoring in periurban environments. Integrating grassland functions into urban planning and policy is essential for improving the sustainability and resilience of periurban landscapes.