Response of soil fauna to land use intensification in a global meta-analysis

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Land use intensification, particularly a shift from extensively (low-input) to intensively (high-input) managed agroecosystems is often seen as one of the main drivers of global biodiversity decline and is considered the main factor applying pressure on soil biodiversity. When confronted with future land use change, understanding the responses of soil biodiversity to different land use regimes of varying intensity is decisive for adequate land management. However, there is still substantial uncertainty about how consistently different taxonomic groups respond to land use intensification. The main objective of this project is to systematically assess and quantify through network meta-analysis the effects of land-use intensification on soil organisms in global agroecosystems, and to analyze the dependence of these effects on abiotic factors such as soil properties (organic matter, pH, nutrient and water availability, texture), climatic variables and land use history. A global meta-analysis will help to understand whether certain taxonomic or functional groups of organisms are more affected by land use intensification, or whether organisms inhabiting areas with a longer history of land use show similar responses to those living in areas with shorter history. The dependance of the effects (size and direction) of land use intensification on soil organisms on the type of intensification studied, climate, and soil properties (pH, N, texture, organic matter) can also be quantified through a global meta-analysis. A network meta-analysis is especially appropriate for this purpose as it exploits all available direct and indirect evidence, and eliminates the need to have a common reference land use in all studies as occurs with traditional meta-analyses based on pairwise comparisons (i.e. intervention: arable vs. reference: undisturbed ecosystems, intervention: pasture vs. reference: undisturbed ecosystems). This allows to include more studies for analysis, that compare the effects of at least two land use regimes of different intensity on soil organisms (i.e. intervention: arable vs reference: pasture; intervention: pasture vs reference: undisturbed ecosystems).