Studies of soil organisms are usually lab-based, but in a rare field study, Franciska de Vries — now at Lancaster University, UK — and her colleagues looked at the relationship between soil food webs and carbon and nitrogen entering and leaving controlled areas. The 60 sites — in Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Greece — included grassland, intensely farmed sites and areas with crop rotation.

Intensive land use, such as wheat cultivation, reduced the mass of soil life of all kinds. But the researchers found that biomass within soil was a better predictor of nutrient cycling and soil health than was land usage, and suggest that nutrient models should pay more attention to what happens underground.

Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1305198110 (2013)