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Soil biodiversity is increasingly recognized as providing benefits to human health because it can suppress disease-causing soil organisms and provide clean air, water and food. Poor land-management practices and environmental change are, however, affecting belowground communities globally, and the resulting declines in soil biodiversity reduce and impair these benefits. Importantly, current research indicates that soil biodiversity can be maintained and partially restored if managed sustainably. Promoting the ecological complexity and robustness of soil biodiversity through improved management practices represents an underutilized resource with the ability to improve human health.
Soils comprise a dynamic reservoir of biodiversity within which the interactions between microbes, animals and plants provide many benefits for human well-being; however, their potential use for the maintenance of human health has been less clear1-3. Living soils are vital to humans because soil biodiversity, with its inherent complexity (the types, sizes, traits and functions of soil organisms), not only provides disease control but also influences the quantity and quality of the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink4. The long-term provision of these benefits is dependent on careful and sustainable use of soils as a resource. Yet, soil biodiversity is often unintentionally affected by human-induced global changes. Land-use change, including urbanization, agriculture, deforestation and desertification, can have a ripple effect on soils and soil biodiversity that extends far beyond the original site of disturbance5,6. For example, the increase in soil erosion by water and wind contributes to the formation of dust storms and the dispersal of soil organisms and pathogens, with effects on soil biodiversity and ultimately on human, plant and animal health7-10.
Research efforts are rapidly producing information about soil biodiversity and its functions, which can be combined with land managers' knowledge, to inform the development of sustainable soilmanagement practices1,11-13. The resulting global preservation and restoration of soils would provide an additional path towards decreasing disease in and providing medicine for humans, plants and animals.
Here, we focus on the impacts of the use and mismanagement of land on human health due to (1) changes in the prevalence of antagonists for soil-borne pests and pathogens that cause diseases in humans, plants and animals, and (2) changes in soil biodiversity that affect the maintenance of health (Fig. 1). We...