posts – Soil & Landscape Science Lab

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An underground census: what bacteria and fungi tell us about ecosystem health

A new bacterial:fungal richness ratio offers a practical way to read the biological character of soils across Australia

soil science

soil biology

soil health

microbiome

ecosystem monitoring

Most of what keeps an ecosystem working happens out of sight. Beneath every grassland, forest, farm and desert shrubland is a living community of bacteria, fungi and other…

The missing number: how much more carbon can soils hold?

…and how quickly can we measure it? Prompted by a new paper by Hu and Viscarra Rossel (2026) in SOIL.

soil science

soil carbon

carbon saturation

spectroscopy

machine learning

Soil carbon is often treated as if every soil is an empty bucket waiting to be filled. Add more plant residues, reduce disturbance, improve management, and the soil should…

Soil carbon models, process realism, and AI

A commentary prompted by a new paper by Zhang and Viscarra Rossel (2026) in Geoderma

soil science

soil carbon

biogeochemical modelling

soil carbon modelling

For many years, soil carbon models succeeded by remaining simple enough to work with limited data. They represented the soil system using a few conceptual pools that decayed…

Why soil sensing needs more than spectroscopy

On the occasion of a new paper by Hu et al. (2026) in the European Journal of Soil Science

soil science

sensing

LIBS

spectroscopy

For the past twenty years or so, soil sensing has been almost synonymous with soil spectroscopy. Visible, near-infrared and mid-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy…

From slogan to system: a sensing‑enabled view of soil health

A paper by Hu et al. (2026) in SOIL

soil science

soil health

sustainable development

SDGs

Hu et al. (2026) propose a sensing-enabled framework that redefines soil health as an ecological condition relative to a soil’s natural potential, and argue that proximal and remote sensing are essential to making soil health measurable at scale.

Landscapes, soils, and the stories they tell

ENST2007: Landscapes, Soils and Surface Environments

soil science

landscape science

geospatial science

hydrology

Indigenous knowledge

SDGs

Landscapes and soils shape many of the environmental challenges we face, from food production and water security to biodiversity conservation and climate change. Our new…