If you’ve ever dug your hands into fresh earth and felt its cool, crumbly texture, you might have noticed the subtle, earthy ...

The microbes, fungi and creatures that live in soil do the important work of eating dead plants and animals. There are also some soil bacteria that eat actual rock. It’s this array of soil-living ...

Silvia Pressel, a Museum researcher in the Algae, Fungi and Plants Division, says, 'Soil is full of millions of living organisms that interact with one another. These organisms have a major influence ...

Scientists just discovered a new phylum of microbes in Earth’s Critical Zone. The Critical Zone—also known as the planet’s ...

Scientists have discovered a new phylum of microbes in the Earth's Critical Zone, an area of deep soil that restores water quality. Ground water, which becomes drinking water, passes through where ...

Both fungi and roundworms are outdone dramatically in turn by still smaller organisms. In a pinch of garden soil, about a gram in weight, live millions of bacteria, representing several thousand ...

Learn about a new phylum of microbes that lives in deep soil, a layer of the Earth that supports water cycling and nutrient ...

It feeds us, captures carbon and provides a home for billions of living creatures ... a magnifying glass. Soil is a mixture of tiny particles of rock, dead plants and animals, air and water.

Soils provide a wide range of important ecosystem services — such as a living filter for ... manage soil and water, and domesticate crops and animals to help meet our basic human requirements.

Soil organic matter is composed of soil microbes including bacteria and fungi, decaying material from once-living organisms such as plant and animal tissues, fecal material, and products formed ...