Food webs and ecosystem services during soil transformations.

The use of land for agriculture, commercial forestry, and other goals forms the most substantial human alteration of the Earth system. This currently represents the primary driving force in the loss of biological diversity and habitat degradation worldwide (Bardgett, 2005). Much is still to be learned about how soils transform through these kinds of land use. The EU project Soil Transformations in European Catchments (SoilTrEC) proposes to develop an integrated model of soil processes and ecosystem services, by studying areas with newly formed to severely degraded soils. Changes in soil food webs during changes in ecosystems have been