Soil is the foundation for healthy ecosystems and plays an important role in sustaining life. Soil serves as the baseline for life and provides a variety of ecosystems and societal functions. Despite sustaining the world’s demands of food, fibers, and fuels, regulating Earth’s air and water quality, and storing greenhouse gases, the value of soil, commonly termed “dirt”, is often dismissed. This human disconnect from this important source of life, especially in the middle of our climate crisis, needs to be addressed as a vital sustainability practice.

Soil health is largely dependent on a diverse thriving organism composition. This world of organism biodiversity (diversity of life) is formed by microorganisms (e.g. bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes) and mesofauna (e.g. acari and springtails), as well as the more familiar macro-fauna (e.g. earthworms and termites).

Soil organisms can be detected, enumerated, and characterized through advancement in molecular methods such as the use of Environmental DNA (eDNA). This tool takes advantage of DNA found in the environment, from organisms in the form of feces, skin cells, pollen, whole cells (microbes) that can then be collected from soil, sediment, water, and even air! We can use the eDNA from the sample to obtain information on the organisms found in soil from microbes, plants, and vertebrates.