 So another really important nutrient is called phosphorus and phosphorus is one of those nutrients that comes from the earth's crust. So what happens with the earth's crust is that we have this really long-term process called weathering and so as water in particular moves across the surface of soil and soaks down through that we start to see some of that hard rock breaking up into informing soil. So those processes are really slow that happen over really long time so we talk about geological time so over millennia or longer periods of time but biology is really clever because when we start having living processes we start accumulating more processes and we start being able to build these more complex systems and so when we start having plants and these other little life forms these tiny little ones that live on the surface of the soil when we start having those those form they also create these these weathering processes so they can help to speed up that process and one of the really important things that that fungi in particular but there are other organisms and the soil does is that they release phosphorus and so phosphorus is really important for healthy root growth in plants and of course the plants need their roots into the into the soil to be able to access lots of soil water to be able to access those nutrients and to be able to survive drought and so so these really important friendships and these really important collaborations that occur between all sorts of different organisms are really you know demonstrate to us that collaboration is really that fundamental part of of life as some as those organisms release phosphorus they put that into the soil water so the plants can take that in or some of those organisms like fungi have this really direct relationship with actually living in the soil roots in the plant roots and can trade and share that phosphorus and as those plants die we've talked about before about that decomposition process that again can start to re-release those nutrients for other organisms to take them up so another really important part of that process is all of those processes happening in the soil we've got roots growing through the soil and we've got fungi joining with the roots and also growing through the soil but with these really tiny little hi-fi so the little strands that grow through the soil they start to form glues and and create these presses and compaction process that really find scales that build soil structure and that's really important so sometimes when you dig up a bit of soil the soil will spread everywhere and so there's that soil that doesn't have much soil structure and water can find that difficult to move through but other times you'll dig up a chunk of soil and you'll see that actually the soil holds together and there's lots of soil sticking to the roots and that's indicative of a process where those plants are building a really healthy soil structure. Now that's really important for us that when it starts to rain that we've all seen the big puddles around the place and how problematic that can be and big erosion coming off the side of mountains where too much water is coming through and so those biological processes are really important to help create those structures that allow more water to come into the soil to be stored for later plant growth but also to help manage that flow of water from the rain through the landscape making it more available over a longer period of time for plants before it moves down into our creeks and eventually out into the oceans.