Importance of Soil in Climate Resilience

Roosi Soosaar from Soilprotection represented the Precilience project at the 2026 Global Soil Biodiversity Conference (GSBC) in Victoria, Canada. Read her reflections on the event and soil in climate resilience.

Roosi Soosaar at Global Soil Biodiversity Conference (GSBC)

Throughout the conference, a repeated message was that climate, soil properties, biodiversity and management all jointly determine soil multifunctionality. That means the same practice can have different outcomes depending on rainfall, soil type, organic matter, crop history and the living communities already present in the soil. A crop does not fail only because of drought, just as a forest does not become vulnerable only because of one pathogen. Soil does not lose resilience as a result of one management practice.

For farmers, forest managers, advisers and policymakers in the Boreal region of Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, that message matters. Climate stress is increasing, soils are losing function, and simple one-factor solutions are no longer enough.

• Farmers and foresters are being asked to make better decisions in a system that is becoming harder to read. This creates a real challenge.

• The central threat is loss of soil organic matter and soil organic carbon.

• Soil organic matter (SOM) and its carbon content (SOC) are not just technical soil indicators. They are the threads that hold the system together as they help soil store water, feed microbes, form aggregates, resist erosion, cycle nutrients and support soil food webs.

When soil organic matter and soil carbon content decline:

• Habitat complexity weakens

• Aggregate stability declines

• Water and gas movement change

• Microbial and faunal communities lose the structure they depend on.

Precilience is working across the Boreal region, in Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark to test practical climate resilience solutions in real agricultural and forest systems.

The project uses the IPCC AR6 risk logic: risks emerge when climate hazards, exposed crops or forests, and vulnerable systems meet. A spring drought becomes a serious risk when crops are exposed in a region without enough water buffering, irrigation capacity or resilient management.

But Precilience also looks at the opportunities, a longer growing season can become beneficial only when farmers and forest managers have the right cultivars, species choices, water management and soil conditions to use it.

Recommended Next Steps

1. See the living system

Soil biodiversity is not background biology. Bacteria, fungi, protists and earthworms actively shape nutrient cycling, decomposition, plant productivity, carbon storage, water movement and greenhouse gas fluxes. The GSBC conference showed that microbial diversity explains soil functions beyond what climate and abiotic soil properties alone can do. The practical point is clear: if we ignore soil life, we misread soil resilience.

2. Measure what matters

Traditional soil tests are not enough on their own. Precilience connects soil moisture, nutrient cycling, water quality, crop disease, pests and microbial indicators. For example, fungal communities are being sequenced in Estonian tillage demonstrations in Jõgevamaa, Pärnumaa and Viljandimaa under direct seeding, intensive tillage and minimal tillage.

The first results already show why measurement matters. Fungal community structure is mainly driven by site, not only treatment. In Viljandimaa, where pea followed rye, minimal tillage produced clearer functional restructuring and more saprotrophs, suggesting enhanced decomposition and a more functionally diverse community.

But the pattern is not universal. Reduced tillage can support fungal richness, yet the response depends on site and crop legacy. Pathogen abundance also does not consistently rise under minimal tillage, so disease decisions should be based on site-specific monitoring, not assumptions.

3. Test solutions together

Soil, water, crops and forests cannot be separated. That is why Precilience tests conservation tillage, soil improvers, cover cropping, crop rotation, drainage management, water storage, irrigation structures, sedimentation ponds and river system opening side by side.

In forests, Precilience is also testing mixed-species regeneration, continuous cover forestry, clear-cut comparisons and clonal trials of Norway spruce and Scots pine. Early Scots pine mycobiome work shows that seedling origin, regional biogeography and stand composition shape fungal diversity. This matters because mixture choice affects forest health. Pine and birch mixtures can increase both pathogens and symbionts, while pine and spruce do not show the same pattern.

Key Insights

Climate change can bring:

• poor crop establishment

• lower yields

• increased drought sensitivity

• higher nutrient losses

• more erosion

• more disease pressure

• weaker forest regeneration

• lower carbon storage

• worse water quality.

Adaptation to climate change can look like:

A farmer can choose tillage, cover crops, soil improvers and drainage measures based on local soil biology, water dynamics and disease risk.

A forest manager can select regeneration methods, tree mixtures and genotypes with a clearer understanding of drought and pathogen resilience.

A policymaker can support climate adaptation that protects soil biodiversity, carbon, water and production at the same time.

This is the future Precilience is building toward: precision climate resilience based on living, diverse and well-managed soils.

Forests matter

The GSBC conference also sent a clear warning: keep forests healthy.

Conversion from forest to cropland is among the most damaging transitions for soil microbial diversity. Forests retain higher microbial diversity than agricultural soils, and Boreal forests are especially important because ectomycorrhizal fungi support nutrient uptake and carbon storage. There is also a boundary problem. Pesticide residues can spill into forest soils from neighbouring fields, even though woodlands usually carry fewer residues than croplands. Protecting forests is therefore not separate from soil biodiversity policy. It is part of the same climate resilience strategy that the Precilience project advocates.

The message from the Global Soil Biodiversity Conference and from Precilience field work points in the same direction: soil life is no longer a side topic. It is the living infrastructure that connects climate resilience, food production, forests, water and carbon. If we want resilient crops, forests, water systems and carbon storage, we must protect the living soil beneath them.

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