Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the world and shape our lives.Researchers set out to calculate how much of Earth’s life dwells in the planet’s least admired environment
To many humans, soil is just the dirt under our feet. But new research shows that for more than half of all species on Earth, soil is crucial habitat—and an imperiled one at that.
“I think soil’s having a moment,” says Mark Anthony, a fungal ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research. “We’re starting to realize that we’ve really messed up our soils at a global scale.”
Anthony is co-author of a study, published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, that calculates that about 59 percent of species on Earth rely on soil for one or more stages of their life. That figure is a steep change from the only previous general estimate of about a quarter of all animals. “I did come in with expectations that the number would be way higher than everyone was saying because 25 percent felt low,” Anthony says.
