Soil Biology

To provide an understanding of how the soil organisms in their complex environment regulate and drive global processes. This includes an understanding of 1) the huge diversity of soil organisms, 2) the factors governing this diversity, 3) the importance of organism interactions for the soil processes and 4) how interactions between organisms are essential for soil services. Moreover, we focus on science communication.

Knowledge:

Students will obtain knowledge and understanding of:

• The physicochemical properties of soils and how they form the basis for the soil organisms
• The important organism groups and their interaction with each other and with plants
• The impact of soil organisms on important processes in soil (e.g. decomposition, nitrogen transformations and plant growth)
• Methods and techniques in soil ecology
• The importance of soil biology in society and science
• Means of communicating with scientists and the public

Skills:

Students should become able to:

• Describe and identify different important soil organisms (microfauna, mesofauna, macrofauna) to relevant taxonomic level
• Analyse how soils develop in different ecosystems and how this affects soil organisms.
• Work experimentally with soil and its organisms (this includes formulation of hypotheses, planning and performing experiments, analysis and statistical testing of the data)
• Communicate the results verbally and written

Competences:

Students should become able to:

• Evaluate how human activities affect the soil environment
• Understand the services soils provide to environment and to human society
• Analyse, put into perspective, and evaluate original research papers
• Design, perform and critically analyse basic experiments addressing ecological and biological issues
• Perform relevant written and oral presentation of acquired knowledge and ideas with respect to the receiver.