Dual-scale drivers of soil biodiversity in agroecosystems: Field management outweighs landscape effects, but both matter

Gao et al., 2026

1. Soil communities in agricultural fields are shaped by both farm management and surrounding landscape structure. However, their relative contribution and potential interactions remain unclear. Understanding these relationships is essential for conserving soil biodiversity, which underpins key ecosystem functions and services.
2. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a field soil sampling campaign across 87 farms in the Netherlands to assess how field-scale management and landscape structure in combination determine multiple soil communities, including bacteria, fungi, protists and invertebrates, in agroecosystems.
3. Landscape structure significantly influenced the diversity and composition of soil organisms in addition to the strong influence of field-scale management. In particular, the compositional landscape heterogeneity played a stronger role than configurational heterogeneity in shaping soil community composition. Importantly, the influence of landscape structure on soil diversity was independent of land use intensity at the field scale, with the exception of soil invertebrates.
4. Synthesis and applications. These findings highlight the need for conservation strategies that integrate both field-scale and landscape-scale planning. The promotion of diverse land use types might offer a practical pathway to maximize the effectiveness of soil biodiversity conservation within an intensively managed agricultural matrix.

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.70295