![]() These systems need to be national but there is also a desperate need for international coordination. In order to muster an effective response to the crisis, to avoid further deterioration, and to restore unhealthy soils, we need a new and coherent approach, namely to deal with soils worldwide as patients in need of health care and create (i) a public health system for development of effective policies for land use, conservation, restoration, recommendations of prophylactic measures, monitoring and identification of problems (epidemiology), organizing crisis responses, etc., and (ii) a healthcare system charged with soil care: the promotion of good practices, implementation of prophylaxis measures, and institution of therapies for treatment of unhealthy soils and restoration of drylands. Fuelling the belowground microbial bioreactor is the aboveground plant and photosynthetic surface microbial life which captures solar energy, fixes inorganic CO 2 to organic carbon, and channels fixed carbon and energy into soil. The soil microbiota, which constitutes the greatest reservoir and donor of microbial diversity on Earth, acts as a vast bioreactor, mediating a myriad of chemical reactions that turn the biogeochemical cycles, recycle wastes, purify water, and underpin the multitude of other services soil provides. Immediate and coordinated action on a global scale is urgently required to slow and ultimately reverse the loss of healthy soils.ĭespite the ‘dirt-dust’, non-vital appearance of soil, it is a highly dynamic living entity, whose life is overwhelmingly microbial. Such services are pivotal to the Sustainability Development Goals formulated by the United Nations. As a result of anthropogenic abuses, and natural and global warming-promoted extreme weather events, Planet Earth is currently experiencing an unprecedented crisis of soil deterioration, desertification and erosive loss that increasingly prejudices the services it provides. Healthy soil availability is the limiting parameter in the provision of a number of these services.
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