Types of Life Found in the Soil!

• Microorganisms (i.e., bacteria, fungi)
• Microfauna (i.e., protozoa and nematodes)
• Mesofauna such as springtails and mites,
• Macrofauna and megafauna such as earthworms, ants, termites and some mammals

How Soils do what they do

• “A plant takes carbon dioxide out of the air and, with the help of sunlight and water, converts it to sugars. Every bit of that plant — stems, leaves, roots — is made from carbon that was once in our atmosphere. Some of this carbon goes into the soil as roots. The roots, then, release sugars to feed soil microbes. These microbes perform their own chemical processes to convert carbon into even more stable forms.”
• And they make clouds! “there may be a vast and previously unrecognized positive feedback loop acting over forests. Mushrooms, which spring up like tulips after a good soaking, themselves make spores that act as rain seeds, which makes the rain that makes more mushrooms.”

My notes on soil and fungi books

• The Soil Will Save Us / Kristin Ohlsson
• Entangled Life / Merlin Sheldrake

Initiatives

• Soil Carbon Coalition - We are a nonprofit organization wanting to advance the practice, and spread awareness of the opportunity, of turning atmospheric carbon into living landscapes and soil carbon (such as soil life, organic matter, humus, etc.). Our principal project is the Soil Carbon Challenge, an international "competition" to see how fast land managers can turn atmospheric carbon into water-holding, fertility-enhancing soil carbon.