Expanding education about the state of soil biodiversity

Society’s awareness, understanding, and management of life in the soil—its soil biodiversity literacy—is important to ensuring the sustainability of soil-derived ecosystem services. Widespread soil biology education is essential to enhancing this literacy. Unfortunately, soil organisms are rarely integrated into environmental science courses, including soil-specific ones. This needs to change to foster better care of fragile soil ecosystems. Thankfully, many opportunities exist to expand education about soil biodiversity in diverse non-majors and introductory science courses, especially by connecting urban soils to students’ daily lives and wellbeing. Ecologists need to lead the way into a soil biodiversity education renaissance.