Visions for soil biodiversity and health indicators: outcomes from the World Biodiversity Forum 2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25674/523Keywords:
Belowground biodiversity, Bioindicator, Ecosystem function, Monitoring, Soil healthAbstract
Soil biodiversity comprises ~59% of all species worldwide and plays a fundamental role in maintaining ecosystem functioning, supporting food and water security, regulating climate, and sustaining human well-being. However, despite growing recognition of its importance, biological dimensions of soil health remain insufficiently represented in monitoring frameworks and environmental policy. The session “Visions for Soil Biodiversity and Health Indicators”, held at the World Biodiversity Forum 2026 in Davos, Switzerland, brought together researchers and practitioners from international monitoring initiatives, national assessment programs, and technological innovation projects to discuss pathways toward robust and policy-relevant soil biodiversity indicators. The session highlighted recent advances in harmonizing soil biodiversity monitoring across scales, including efforts to integrate existing international protocols and establish globally comparable assessment frameworks. Contributions addressed the development of reliable biodiversity metrics, the integration of molecular and morphological approaches, and the challenges of translating complex ecological data into indicators suitable for environmental governance. Integrating well-established and emerging technologies, such as environmental DNA metabarcoding, artificial intelligence-based image recognition, automated sensor networks, and soil food-web analyses were presented as promising tools for improving the efficiency, scalability, and ecological relevance of soil monitoring. Several studies further demonstrated how soil biodiversity indicators can reveal responses to anthropogenic pressures, including land-use intensification and pesticide contamination, and contribute to the evaluation of soil restoration efforts. Collectively, the presentations emphasized that future soil health assessments will require integrated approaches combining taxonomic, functional, and process-based indicators. The session underscored the importance of international collaboration, methodological standardization, and interdisciplinary research to support emerging soil monitoring legislation and global biodiversity targets. Advancing scientifically robust soil biodiversity indicators will be essential for safeguarding soil health and the ecosystem services upon which human societies depend.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Nico Eisenhauer, Julia Köninger, Sylvain Lanz, Zoë Lindo, Silvia Pieper, Julia Seeber, Marcel G.A. van der Heijden, Anton Potapov
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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