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Healthy floors are vital to support life on earth. They are essential to ecosystems, agricultural production and clean water, and even help regulate the climate.
A new article In Geophysics reviews Explore the latest scientific methods to monitor soil health, including innovative tools such as digital twins and satellite compatible programs, while highlighting persistent gaps in the connection of indicators to soil functions through scales. Here we asked the authors to give an overview of the subject.
What is soil health and how is soil quality different?
Healthy soil is a flourishing ecosystem: it feeds plants, filters water, stores carbon and supports verses, microbes and other tiny life forms.
Consider soil health as soil capacity to “stay alive” and do your job. Healthy soil is a flourishing ecosystem: it feeds plants, filters water, stores carbon and supports verses, microbes and other tiny life forms. Ground qualityOn the other hand, generally refers to how the soil is good for cultivation cultivation. The health of the soil is the situation as a whole – it is a question of keeping the soil which prosperous not only for farms, but for nature and our planet.
Why is soil health important?
The healthy soil is a multifunctional pinfurner of terrestrial ecosystems. It secures food production by nourishing crops, acts as a natural water filter while retaining pollutants and serves as massive carbon wells, sequestering atmospheric co₂ to mitigate climate change – a controlled process on a continental scale through EU initiatives such as Lucaswhich follows the carbon of the soil through data by satellite and in the field. Simultaneously, it houses various underground communities, from bacteria to earthworms, which cause cycling of nutrients and improve the resilience of ecosystems against droughts, floods and pathogens.
How to measure soil health?
Scientists assess three fundamental dimensions:
- Physical properties: structure (for example, root penetration, water retention).
- Chemical properties: availability of nutrients and PH balance.
- Biological properties: microbial and macrofaunal activity (for example, decomposition rate).
Emerging tools, such as satellite spectral imaging and digital twins focused on AI, integrate data on the landscape scale (for example, erosion models, vegetation cover) to contextualize measurements in the field. However, the challenges persist in scaling processes on a microscopic scale (for example, the nutrient cycle) to predict the results at the landscape.
Why are soil microbes so important?
The microbial communities of the soil (bacteria, fungi, archaea) are essential biogeochemical agents. They decompose organic matter, recycled nutrients and secrete substances that stabilize soil aggregates, reducing erosion. Microbial communities also suppress plant pathogens and form symbiotic relationships with roots, improving cultures resilience. Their absence leads to soil degradation, compromising biophysical integrity and triggering cascade reductions in the functionality of ecosystems.
How does water affect soil health?
Water is the vital element of soil ecosystems.
Water is the vital element of soil ecosystems. Optimal humidity maintains plant hydration and microbial activity. Excess water, however, induces hypoxia, altering root breathing and promoting anaerobic processes such as methanogenesis. Prolonged drought destabilizes the structure of the soil, increasing the risk of erosion. Healthy floors counteract these extremes through stable aggregates and organic matter, acting like sponges to store water during droughts and absorb precipitation during floods.
Can satellites really monitor soil health?
Yes. Programs like EU Lucas incorporate satellite data (for example, multispectral imaging of Copernicus sentinel -2 for organic carbon) with ground surveys – more than 100,000 soil samples taken between 2009 and 2022 for physical, chemical and biological analysis. This hybrid approach identifies degraded areas, assesses restoration efforts and bursts localized data (for example, nutrient cycles) with landscape processes. These data sets also feed digital twins, allowing predictive models that inform policies such as the EU soil monitoring law.
What is a “digital twin” for the soil plant system?
A digital twin is a dynamic replica based on a physical system – in this case, the continuum of the soil -plane environment. It simulates critical processes such as water, nutrients and energy flows (for example, using models such as the-SCope rod) and continuously improves its precision by assimilating the sensor data in real time. This creates a virtual laboratory where we can test the responses to challenges such as drought or pollution without risking real ecosystems. While the concept is from aerospace, digital twins are now leading major initiatives such as the The destination of the EU destination For modeling of climatic extremes. Taking advantage of recent advances in AI and satellite data, we can now monitor and model soil health scenarios on the continent levels, optimization and transformation of land management practices.
What critical gaps remain in our understanding of soil health?
The safeguarding of soil health is not only an ecological imperative but an cornerstone of the future of humanity.
Key unknowns include feedback loops between soil structure and microbial communities, scaling microscophes (for example, nutrient cycling) in landscapes and forecasting climatic impacts on soil carbon and microbial symbiosis. Practical obstacles include fragmented global data sets, limited integration of microbial features in models and profitable tools for farmers. Collaborative platforms such as EU soil observatory Research and policy of bridges, but challenges such as modeling the dynamics of root nutrients in heterogeneous soils or the merger of satellite data persists. Facing these shortcomings requires interdisciplinary innovation – an urgent task, because the safeguarding of soil health is not only an ecological imperative but an cornerstone of the future of humanity.
—Yijian Zeng ((Protected by e-mail),, 
0000-0002-2166-5314), University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands; And Bob Su (0000-0003-2096-1733), University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
Publisher’s note: This is the AGU publications policy to invite the authors of articles published in Reviews of Geophysics to Writing summed up for Vox of EOS publishers.