Soil and Sediment: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning meeting
Wageningen, The Netherlands, April 6-11, 1997

SUMMARY

This workshop was the first integrative workshop bringing together scientists whose disciplinary focus was the biodiversity and geochemistry in one of three domains: Soils, Freshwater sediments and Marine sediments. A common basis of the meeting was our collective scientific knowledge of the organisms associated with the changes in land use practices, pollution of soils that had connecting effects on streams and oceans, which affected clean water or food supply (fisheries, agricultural crops) or health, and the organisms living in these domains. Participants quickly realized that:

1. Soil, freshwater, and marine sediments are interconnected by similarities in: biota, ecosystem processes, biogeochemistry, and, the types of functions performed by the diversity of biota
2. Though many of the principles were similar, terminology used by the participants differed among the domains
3. Linkages of knowledge across the three domains would increase our understanding of how disturbances affect subsurface biodiversity and functioning, and, in turn, how these impacts of disturbance influence aboveground ecosystem function
4. A major effort is recommended to improve our communication and understanding of the biodiversity of soils and sediments. The linkage of the soil and sediments as a research and synthesis effort will provide more information and a broader understanding of our planet on a global scale than traditional studies of each domain alone.