PubMed · 2026-05-15
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.
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.