Urban and industrial land uses have a higher soil biological quality than expected from physicochemical quality

Sophie Joimel (1, 2) , Christophe Schwartz (1) , Mickael Hedde (2) , Sayuri Kiyota (3) , Paul Henning Krogh (4) , Johanne Nahmani (3) , Guenola Peres (5, 6) , Alan Vergnes (3) , Jérôme Cortet (3)

1 LSE - Laboratoire Sols et Environnement
2 ECOSYS - Ecologie fonctionnelle et écotoxicologie des agroécosystèmes
3 CEFE - Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive
4 Department of Bioscience [Aarhus]
5 SAS - Sol Agro et hydrosystème Spatialisation
6 ECOBIO - Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution [Rennes]

Despite their importance both in soil functioning and as soil indicators, the response of microarthropods to various land uses is still unclear. The aim of this study is to assess the effect of land use on microarthropod diversity and determine whether a soil's biological quality follows the same physicochemical quality-based gradient from forest, agriculture-grassland, agriculture-arable land, vineyards, urban vegetable gardens to urban, industrial, traffic, mining and military areas. A database compiling the characteristics of 758 communities has been established. We calculated Collembola community indices including: species richness, Pielou's evenness index, collembolan life forms, the abundance of Collembola and of Acari, the Acari/Collembola abundance ratio, and the Collembolan ecomorphological index. Results show that agricultural land use was the most harmful for soil microarthropod biodiversity, whilst urban and industrial land uses give the same level of soil biological quality as forests do. Furthermore, differences between the proportions of Acari and ecomorphological groups were observed between land uses. This study, defining soil microarthropod diversity baselines for current land uses, should therefore help in managing and preserving soil microarthropod biodiversity, especially by supporting the preservation of soil quality.

Keywords: Garden soils; Industrial and urban soils; Collembola; Anthropisation; Agricultural soils; Forest soils

Domains: Environmental Sciences; Biodiversity and Ecology

Sophie Joimel, Christophe Schwartz, Mickael Hedde, Sayuri Kiyota, Paul Henning Krogh, et al.. Urban and industrial land uses have a higher soil biological quality than expected from physicochemical quality. Science of the Total Environment, 2017, 584-585, pp.614-621. ⟨10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.01.086⟩. ⟨hal-01507698⟩