Sustainable soil management to unleash soil biodiversity potential and increase environmental, economic and social wellbeing

The main goal of SOILGUARD is to define the effects of land management practices and climate change stressors on soil biodiversity and the cascading effects on soil multifunctionality and ecosystem services in agroecosystems. The project will create an extensive network of field sites under climate and land degradation gradients in the EU and other continents to compare unsustainable and sustainable agronomic land management practices. On the other hand, climate simulations will be implemented in long-term field experiments comparing unsustainable and sustainable agronomic practices in different EU biogeographical regions. In both experimental designs SOILGUARD will depict: i) soil biodiversity community structure, ii) correlations between land management, land degradation, soil biodiversity and climate change with soil multifunctionality and ecosystem services delivery, iii) region-specific socioeconomic and sociocultural impact iv) prediction of long-term impacts of climate change stressors and soil management on biodiversity and ecosystem functions.