Soil Science

Introduction

It is easy to think of soil as just inanimate, inorganic material. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, soil pores are home to a vast array of organisms, from large invertebrates (soil macrofauna), to small invertebrates (soil mesofauna), and to the smallest cellular organisms (soil microbes).

When you stand on the soil, there are far more living organisms directly under the soles of your feet than there are people on Earth.

In this module, you can explore a few aspects of this living community, looking beneath a grazed pasture in the Northern Tablelands of NSW, where investigations have been made of soil organisms in relation to nutrient cycling (look in the References for more details).

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