GeoLog

soil

Why we need to put plants back in the soil carbon picture

December 5, 2025
Why we need to put plants back in the soil carbon picture
The shades of soil versus the shape of the gully by Anindya Majhi Source: Imaggeo

Happy International Soil Day (5 December)! Today, we’re celebrating the incredible capacity of soil organic carbon (SOC) to fight climate change. But hold the celebratory cake! A paper in the journal SOIL by Raza et al. (2025) has exposed an unexpected scientific blind spot, and it’s a bit surprising! The paper, titled “Missing the input: the underrepresentation of plant physiology in ...[Read More]

The living skin of our planet: Why a world soil health index is our next great global scorecard

November 28, 2025
The living skin of our planet: Why a world soil health index is our next great global scorecard
Soil water repellency by Antonio Jordán Source: Imaggeo

Next time you’re outdoors, in a park or anywhere where there is no pavement, look down at the patch of earth beneath your feet. To many people, it’s just mud, dirt, or maybe soil, something passive that things grow in. But to a soil scientist, that handful of soil represents a dynamic ecosystem that supports an incredible 95% of all the food we eat, filters every drop of our drinking water, ...[Read More]

Can our oases outlast the dry spell of desertification?

June 28, 2024
Can our oases outlast the dry spell of desertification?
Turpan Oasis in China. Credit: Fang Dong (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Ever wondered how fast our planet is losing its footing? Imagine this: every time you blink, four football fields’ worth of fertile soil vanish into thin air. According to the UN, that’s a mind-boggling 100 million hectares gobbled up by land degradation each year! But when this happens in dry regions, it morphs into something even more sinister: desertification. Karina Lima, a climate ...[Read More]

Soil bacteria that hunt like a wolfpack? Myxobacteria and their role in the food web

April 16, 2024
A photo of a wolf in the middle and four microscopic images of colourful bacterial cultures around it.
Fig. 1 The resemblance between bacteria and a hunting wolf might not be obvious, but come take a dive into the weird ecology of Myxobacteria (Collage with photo credit Garcia et al. 2010 and Julien Riedel via pexels.com).

Picture this: bacteria that can slime their way around the soil, finding their prey, circling it, closing in on it and lysing it (or making their cell pop), just to feed on their prey. It sounds like a far stretch from a wolf to a bacteria, but even other soil predators, the comparably huge nematode worms ( up to 100 times bigger!), are afraid of these bacterial “wolves”. I went to the Soil System ...[Read More]