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The Microbiology of Natural Soils

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Soil Microbiology and Sustainable Crop Production

Abstract

Soil microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, control ecosystem functioning through decomposition and nutrient cycling and may serve as indicators of land-use change and ecosystem health (Doran and Zeiss 2000; Waldrop et al. 2000; Yao et al. 2000). However, the study of soil microorganisms is difficult and our current understanding limited. The sheer number, astonishing diversity and small size of these communities become more apparent as our technologies to explore them have improved in recent years (Cardon and Gage 2006). With the rapid rise of molecular techniques, microbial ecologists are now able to walk through the world with the equivalent of the naturalist’s “field notebook,” cataloguing and classifying species. However, we often do not know what they do functionally or ecologically, or why they are found in some soils and not others (Balser et al. 2006). What we do know is that soil microbial communities are dynamic and diverse (Sylvia et al. 2005) almost beyond measure (Schloss and Handelsman 2006), and that some patterns seem to hold on a global scale.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Duff: the layer of partially and fully decomposed organic materials lying below the forest flar litter and immediately above the mineral soil.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the members of the Balser laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, especially Dr. Harry Read and Kevin Budsberg, for their untiring support and assistance. We would also like to thank Balser laboratory alumna Drs. Jessica Gutknecht and Jenny Kao-Kniffin for valuable discussions about these ideas over the years. Finally, we thank the editors for their valuable comments in strengthening this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1525 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Teri C. Balser & Lindsey K. Moritz

  2. Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 430 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Devin Wixon

  3. Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Laura Lipps

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  1. Teri C. Balser
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Correspondence to Teri C. Balser .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6AS, United Kingdom

    Geoffrey R. Dixon

  2. Scottish Universities Environmental Rese, Scottish Enterprise Technology Park, East Kilbride, G75 0QF, United Kingdom

    Emma L. Tilston

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Balser, T.C., Wixon, D., Moritz, L.K., Lipps, L. (2010). The Microbiology of Natural Soils. In: Dixon, G., Tilston, E. (eds) Soil Microbiology and Sustainable Crop Production. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9479-7_2

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