Agricultural soil microbiomes are structurally and functionally more resistant to warming than adjacent natural ecosystems.
Jiao S, Pan H, García-Palacios P, Tu H, Zhang Y
Soil Health
The compost and living soil you build in a vegetable bed may be quietly cultivating a microbial community tougher than anything in the old-growth forest down the road—and that resilience could one day be bottled and used to protect natural ecosystems from heat stress.
Scientists compared the tiny organisms living in farm soils versus wild, undisturbed soils and found that farm soils—constantly plowed, fertilized, and disrupted—have accidentally bred microbes that handle heat stress far better. When they moved farm microbes into wild soil, the wild soil became more heat-resilient too. The key appears to be that farm microbes are built to survive tough conditions, which turns out to be great preparation for a warming climate.
Key Findings
Agricultural soils showed significantly higher resistance of soil multifunctionality to warming compared to natural soils across 100 paired sites on a continental scale, confirmed by a global meta-analysis.
Resistance of microbial community composition was the strongest predictor of functional resistance—communities that didn't shift much in who was there also kept doing their jobs better under heat.
Introducing agricultural microbiomes into previously undisturbed natural soils enhanced those soils' functional resistance to warming, suggesting microbiome transplants could be a practical climate-adaptation tool.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Farm soils harbor microbes so well-adapted to disturbance that they can actually resist the damaging effects of climate warming—and transplanting those farm microbes into wild soils gives the wild soils the same resilience.
Abstract Preview
Agricultural soil microbiomes experience frequent disturbance from intensive management and may therefore be better equipped to withstand climate warming than microbiomes in undisturbed natural soi...
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