 Thanks Peter and participant to stay with us. Okay, thank you very much. First of all, thank you very much all for coming to be part of this parallel session of the global symposium on soil biodiversity. I like to thank Julia Natalia to be here to to direct the meeting and also to take notes about what's going on in this meeting. It is about the value and the functionality of the soil biodiversity that we will discuss under the title soil biodiversity in action and we have a broad variety of presentations ahead and I look very much forward to that. And the only thing I want to say before I give the word to the first presenter is that we are quite strict in time. So we have 15 minutes per person which is 10 minutes for the presentation and then we have five minutes for questions and answers which is very tight and there's no break between two or four o'clock this afternoon. Now, to give you a little bit of rest. All the presentations will be available after the meeting so you can have a second look on it if you wish. The second thing I want to say in advance is that it's very likely that we do not have enough time to have all the questions and all the answers, but you can use the chat. The chat is below your screen. So if you have a comment or a question, you can also use the chat. If you're giving the presentation, you can or she can look afterwards. Look at the comments look at the questions and come back to you. So we don't have to squeeze all the questions in the comments in the five minutes we have after a presentation so in a way, and you can have all the questions and discussions you like that's the advantage of a virtual meeting like this. But also very strict in time I don't want to waste much time with this kind of information, but I would like to go directly to the first presentation of this afternoon. And this presentation will be given by Pascal should can. And the title of this presentation is termites promote resource patchiness in Asia and constitute a model for achieving the sustainable development goals. Mr. Shoukat floor sure yes. Good morning good evening. Good afternoon depending where you are so I guess you listen to you can listen to me yes. Do you see my do you see my screen I share my screen but no it works. So. Hi Mr. Joukat. We cannot we see black your screen we see that you will start sharing but we don't see the presentation. Can you try again. It will work now so maybe. Okay, nothing. No, I don't see anything please Peter do you see or. I have a white screen. Okay, nothing else. Natalia can you see this. No, I cannot, but if you want we can share it on your behalf we can share on your behalf so I will share it now. And you can just tell me next when I have to, when I have to go from one slide to the other. Okay. Try now it's not working still nothing. Still in black. Okay. Okay, I will share now for you. You can share. There it is. One second. Okay. Don't come that on my 10 minutes, please. Yes, exactly. So. Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening. So as you can see with this title, I'm going to talk about termites and I try to show you in 10 minutes. So I think we can now constitute an interesting model for achieving some of the sustainable development goals. So next slide please. Okay, so as you already know, the system of large diversity of organisms, leaving inside or on the ground on the soil or above on the next slide please. I think we have problem. Juliet, we lose connection. I think that Mr. I think we can wait one minute if you manage to get back. Otherwise, we will pass to the second presentation and we'll, okay. Then you can come in later in the session. Yes, exactly. Okay. No, okay. I'm sorry. I'm here. I don't know what happened. Sorry. I don't see your screen now. Okay. I'm afraid it would be difficult. Okay. So, I will share again your presentation. Okay. Yes, please. Okay. Okay. Yes. So, I can keep talking. I want you to just to say that there are some organisms that are living inside the soil, but that's also to keep active on the ground while remaining in the ground, build or use the soil to build specific. No. It seems that there is a problem of connection, so we will try to solve this with Mr. Okay. And we can go to the next presentation. What do you think? Yes. I think if, if, if Samuel is, is ready to present his presentation, then I would propose Samuel that you are taking now the initiative Samuel, is that okay with you? Can you unmute me, Julia? Yes, you can unmute yourself, Mr. Samuel. Are you ready to take your presentation now, because we first have to fix the connection with Dr. Schuchet? I'm ready. Okay. We start with Samuel Franke now. So very nice, Samuel, that you're ready. The floor is yours. You will give a presentation on the management of humic covers and fungi by diversity in forest soils. You can see my presentation. Perfect. About recorporation. Yes. Okay. Go ahead. My presentation is the decarbonization of soil with intensive agriculture use, pine forest and the provision of formal ecosystem service. I will talk about fungi on the forest, especially agaricals, like hemidus swillus. This is our Chilean experience. The management of humic cover is very important for this soil. In this way, forest soils are recarbonized, initially conforming to the fine branches pine nettles and fungal ephi that make up the leaf leader, we name a forest mulch, and its turn contribute to the soil biodiversity. For example, do you have a humus mulch, do you have a humus mudder, and do you have also a humus mulch, humus mulch, you can find by coniferous, humus mulch, you can have latifolia, red leaves, and humus mulch in both kinds of forests. Normally, by forest, you can achieve range from 20 to 40 ton hectare per year after soil site, sequestrate organic carbon, which play a fundamental role in the nutrition and fertility of forest soil, for abandoned soils or intensive agriculture. You can see the very typical humus mulch, mulch, mudder, and mulch. Humic form are very important in the geological activity of soils. We have a contribution in the relationship of humiform, forest type, geological activity, and the relation of carbon and nutrition. Also you can have a relation of carbon phosphorus and carbon sulfur. This is the influence of the formation of fungi from the canopy of the cobra, and also climat variables like rime fall regime, earth temperature, wind speed, cloudiness, and humidity. This is very, also in pines, the general pines, you can find also micro-risical association, especially in Pinus radiata, we produce in our national nursery, all the plants are inoculated with micro-risical fumes. With the aim, that is the future forestry plantation, develop this symbiotic relationship. The growth and development of this fungi is dynamic, and the productivity is most determined by a multiplicity of environmental factors associated with clima, the organic horizon. This is very important, the organic horizon on the soil, the humiform formation, the structure and manager of pine radiata forests. This kind of edible mushroom produces in our country, by cilius luthus and cilius verandulatus, is a very important income of fungi export. For example, this fungi developed in the forest of radiata pine yield from 300 kilo hectare per year, and many people in the communities live from this production. Cilius luthus, we name boletus of pine, is a constituted micro-risical species of pine, mildly of Pinus radiata. You can see the picture of cilius luthus, but in the humiform mode by radiata pine. We have also another species, cilius granulatus, granulatus of pine. This is also a micro-risical species of pine. This fructification can be found in autumn season and in early winter. Cilius granulatus is a mushroom, you can eat it very good. Also, if you make soil and water conservation practice, you can affect the micro-risic and mushroom production. Especially, if you make a managerial of fertility and soil by university in forest soil, you can increase the production of mushroom production. In this case, you have to manage the humic cover and there can affect in the biodiversity of flora and fauna on flora soil. If you consider following variatus, especially the provision of nutritional elements, base saturation, humus, flora-city, cultural care of the forest. If you make all these practices, for example, fertilization, adaptation of calcium, you can accelerate this composition of the organic matter. If you make also managerial of the forest, you can have also more luminism, more luminity of the forest. Our experience of sustainable managerial of forest and mushroom production, do you need to have a multi-purpose managerial of the forest that should consider the initial density and spatial distribution and successive intervention of training and pruning to prevent the closing of glazes and maintain luminosity, percentage greater than 22%. For example, if you begin with 1,003 projects, if you make pruning, training, commercial training and finally you achieve 400 tree hectare, the final harvest, you can have a model to increment very high reduction of mushroom on the forest. The conclusion is this is an important estimate of carbon sequestration to consider the organic horizon and sub-horizont, because you can sequestrate and fix it, range between 22 and 42 ton hectare per year, which play a role, a fundamental role in the nutrition and productivity of forests. In this unique form, you can find ectomycorrhizic function that correspond to the species Julius Lutus and Julius Landulatus' development. The most important soil ecological factor that includes the migration and mushroom production is a good manager applied in density, intensity, temperature, the percentage of soil mass, moisture, fertility, and path. By the multiple forest management from the forestry point of view, it's very important the luminosity and also to consider the forest mulch or litter, you can have a deep from 10 to 15 centimeter and that contributed to the protection of the soil and the proliferation of mushroom. A multiple use of forest management should be contemplated in order to achieve the recalibriation of previous intensive agriculture soils through a vegetative cover of baleata pine or pine. You have to consider the density, the initial spatial distribution, the successive forest management with chaining and pruning and also the luminosity is favorite in such as to induce provision of spungal ecosystem services. The structure and temporal planning of silvicurphur integration are compatible with the reduction of edible funky. Also we are researching now to evaluate the effect of soil conservation practice as selection of species of lotus leaf and shrubs, especially lupines, showed the application of soil and fauna strength. The improvement of mineralization and humidification condition showed weight patching, calcium, and applique with basal application of low doses of magnesium and phosphorus according to the litter thickness and promote fertilization practice that the new excessive stimulation of humidification and mineralization process of recalibriation process by building oxidative beautification of soils of flora compound. The my conclusion is that is the interaction of forests and soil biodiversity manager, especially forest floor and intrinsic soil biodiversity is very important for production of non timber forestry products and are very relevant for food and income to the community. Thank you very much Professor Franke. As you can see in the chat, everybody can post his questions and comments by chat, they will be answered later by the presenters. According to my clock, we have just one or two minutes for a question. So if there's anyone who would like to pose a question now during the meeting, please raise your hand. Well, if not, again, questions can be posted on the chat and then we continue the session. And my question to Julia is, when do you like me to have Professor Schouquet having his presentation? Peter, Professor Mr. Schouquet is trying to fix the connection issue that he has and he will try to share his presentation at the end of the session. Okay, at the end of the session. Yeah, at the end of the session, so we can go on with the next presenter. Okay, then it's an order to introduce the next presentation, which will be given by Beata Huschkova, I hope I pronounced the name good to Beata. And the title of the presentation is Good Agricultural Practices Help to Restore Sustainable Biodiversity. Beata, the floor is yours. Thank you, can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay, I try to share my screen and if I will not be successful, please, if you can share then my presentation on your screen. Of course, no problem. Okay, I will try. I think I'm not successful. So please, if you can share my presentation, sorry for this. No problem. One second and I will share. Okay, thank you. So thank you. You can tell me next when I should turn the page. And can you make it bigger or is okay like this? Okay, maybe it's okay. So dear colleagues, I would like to present part of our work, which was done together with my colleagues, Rastislav Buscho and the Armilla Makovnikova. And it is focused on, thank you, Good Agricultural Practices Help to Restore Sustainable Biodiversity. Next screen, please. At present time, we observe climate changes, which has negative effect on several soil properties, mainly on soil moisture content, which can significantly decrease the productivity. And one way how to fight against this can be use of so-called Good Agricultural Practices, which has a huge influence on soil properties and biodiversity. So objectives of our study have been focused on assessment of good agricultural practices, like minimum till, mulch, no till and organic farm type of soil cultivation. So in our study, we discovered positive effect of such practices and on moisture content, biodiversity and also on soil structure stability. So next slide, please. We studied soil properties on organic farm, where soil is cultivated in a non-traditional way. The shape of fields are circles. And in the middle of each circle is one stand where the arm is fixed. And the arm is going to the circle and the soil is cultivated in spirals. So one of these arm is 15 meters long and can be changed to another circle and so on. On this arm, you have a spudding machine and you can put also another type of cultivation equipment, also for delivering the moisture to the soil. The soil is not plowed, so it's not turned. It's only used the spudding to cultivate the soil. Next, please. Here is a farmer who is a patent holder of this type of soil cultivation and his arm is, you can see the arm, this 15 meters long arm part of it. And during cultivation, you either can be there or it's not necessary or present, so you can do and other things what you want to do. Next, please. So on this farm, we assessed the soil structure as the stability of soil aggregates in water. We used Bakshayev seeding methods and we checked the economically valuable soil structure, which is represented by aggregates of the size 0.5 to 3 millimeters and coefficient of soil structure, which is calculated from the amount of aggregates between 0.25 to 7 millimeters and divided by aggregates bigger than 7 millimeters and lower than 0.25 millimeters. Next, please. So here on this chart, you can see directly the positive influence of the soil cultivation on the organic farm. You can see the amount of agronomic valuable structure is much higher, mainly in deeper parts and on grassland and on the field with conventional tillage, you can see lower amount of agronomic valuable structure. What is mystery for us is a bit that in grassland, the amount of valuable structure aggregates is quite low. In the middle, you can see the depth 0.2 to 0.4 meters, so this is the ploughing layer, so is the influence of no plough is the highest in this depth, so you can see the highest difference between amount of these aggregates. Next, please. We checked also earthworm density in soil monoliths and in the farm with in the organic farm, the earthworms like number of individuals was much higher than in conventional farm. In 2018, we didn't find any earthworms in the soil with conventional cultivation. The same was also for biomass of earthworms. In 2018, it was zero because there was no earthworms present. So again, a positive influence of organic farming and especially the fact that the soil is not ploughed and that the soil is not contaminated because we discovered in another study that earthworms are practically not present in soil which are contaminated by heavy metals, for example. Next, please. This we studied also in a farm with so-called good agricultural practices or soil saving practices where it was conventional cultivation compared with minimal soil cultivation like no-till, mulch, and minimal application of soil cultivation. And again, the same, the earthworms individuals and also expressed in biomass were much higher in soil with so-called good agricultural practices comparing to traditional cultivation. The highest amount was in mulch application. Next, please. So this is this experimental farm in Borovce. So they are small fields divided. And there is using, we use the different fertilizing and different type of cultivation. Next, please. So we checked this minimum till mulch technology, no till and control was conventional cultivation. Next slide, please. We checked microbial activity like CO2 productivity and dehydrogenase activity. Next, please. Also humus content. The humus content was the highest in soil with good agricultural practices, mainly in no-till. Next, please. CO2 productivity also is the highest in soils with good agricultural practices, mainly in no-till. And the lowest in soil with conventional cultivation. Next, please. So here is the dehydrogenase activity, which is again the highest in no-till and in the topsoil and in the depths of 10 to 30 centimeters is the highest in the minimum technology type of soil cultivation. But this is also because the humus content in this layer is the highest in the minimum technology type of soil cultivation. Next, please. Yield, you can see briefly the yield. And I have to tell that not always the yield is the highest in the soil cultivated in this good agricultural practices system. But we have to tell that we expect that it will improve by years. And also we have to take into consideration that not only the yield is the most important, but we have to consider soil as part of environment and applying good agricultural practices, like no-till, minimum-till mulch or organic farming can improve the sustainability of soil properties and can improve the soil balance with the other part of environment. So not always the yield is the most important. Of course, if there would be a dramatical change in yield, then yes, it is not good. But yes, here, especially for spring barley and corn, the yield was lower and the highest was in conventional cultivation, but it was not so dramatic. Next, please. Good agricultural practices can conserve and restore soil properties. Soil biodiversity is crucial for soil properties improvement. And also soil structure is very essential. And to improve soil structure is quite a long process and it's not so easy. Like for example, if you have compacted soil, you can remove high bulk density very quickly with deep loosening and so on. But improvement of soil structure is complex and it's not possible to do it without soil biodiversity increase. And the last, so thank you for your attention. Well, thank you very much. I'm afraid we ran out a little bit of time, but as you all know that you have to- Sorry for speaking so so slowly. Okay, no problem. But everybody knows that if there are any questions, and I saw there were already someone coming in to you, you can look at the questions, give answer later. So everybody who has a question for Professor Hofskova, please use the chat. And because of time, we have now directly to continue to the next presentation, which will be given by Professor Raul Ortega. And the title of this presentation will be Intercrop Management as a tool to increase microbial diversity on rain-fed element cultivating. Professor Ortega, more is yours. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Peter. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to try to share my screen. Can you see my presentation? Yes, perfect. Okay, fine. So the title of this work is Intercrop Management as a tool to increase soil microbial diversity on rain-fed almond cultivations. This works for part of the project diversification and low input farming across Europe. And this project has an important number of field case studies, 23 in seven different countries of the European Union, representing different agronomical, environmental, climatic, edific, and cultural characteristics. The University of Almería in Spain is participating in this project through the soil microbiological lab of which I am the leader. Okay, the European Research Project Diver Farming aims to develop and test different diversified cropping systems under low input practices to increase land productivity and crops quality. In general terms, intensification of agriculture has led to monoculture systems, intense tillage, and an excessive use of pesticides and input for fertilization. This provoked serious problems such as loss of organic material, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, etc. The final results are a low-efficient use of natural resources and the sustainability of the agro-system is in risk. So that's why it is of great interest to adopt agronomic models based on diversified cropping systems. In this study, we have focused in one intercropped system. We selected, as case study, an almond tree intercropping system of brine-fed almond. We selected three different management practices, one of almond alone, one an intercropped of almond with bingar, and one intercropped of almond with wheat. These crops are on the Almanzora base, close to the Oria town in the northern province, in the northern part of the province of Almería in Spain. The Almanzora basin is in a new gene, basin with material deposited during the myosin, and pleosin with a diverse composition of materials. This is a Mediterranean landscape with semi-arid climate and hot summer, which coincided with the driest month. There is a summer drought in the area and mild winters. The scarcity of water and cold temperatures in winter make brine-fed crops important in the area, and especially important is the almond tree, being the second Spanish province with the largest area devoted to this crop. However, the hard climate conditions and results in low yields, around 150 kilograms per hectare, compared with the Spanish average production of 500 kilograms per hectare. These marginal yields favor the abandonment of crops. This is exacerbated by some policies of the common agricultural policy. For example, different crops cannot be used to qualify for European agricultural subsidies, or some cover is admitted, but not for productive species. This territory is defined in the geographical framework of the European Union as an environmentally and economically disadvantaged area, and the abandonment of crops can cause serious problems of erosion and loss of biodiversity. So our objective in this work is to know its soils and their intercropping system, increase the soil biodiversity of fungi in the semi-area area of the Almansore basin in the northern province of Almería, Spain. So we selected three different management practices, almond tree and almond with a binger in an intercropped and almond with wheat. Here in this picture, we cannot see the the wheat because it has already been harvested before. Okay, our data are based on meta-economic analysis. We extracted the DNA of the fungi with the archaea gene commercial kit and later we sequenced this DNA with the MiSEC Illumina platform. Amplicons were compared against the United ITS database. The bioinformatics analysis were performed with the software Chin2 and we obtained tassonomic data and several diversity indices. Statistical analysis include permanoa to check for significant difference between the communities and on the communities of the different management system and LDA effect size test. So as we can see, there were clear significant differences for the on the three different crop system study. And about the alpha diversity intercropping system, so with higher diversity values being the combination of almond and wheat, the one with the highest values for all the indices study. With the LSEA analysis, we also identified those styles are more associated to the different crop practices. And again, we can see here in the red columns that there are more taxa related to the almond and wheat intercropped management system. Here's on a sample of those taxa related to this system management system of almond and wheat. Like, for example, SDP, cladisporium, cladospiroides, zeta-cladium, SDP, and paraboremia, selahinala, this taxa where all the present or more present in this intercropped system almond and wheat. So other authors found that higher abundancy and diversity in intercropping system, which is in accordance with our results, besides we found a diversity gradient among the different crop system almond and wheat intercropped system was more diverse than almond with vineyard. And these two were more diverse than almond alone in the composition of the fungi and communities. We also found that our different taxa related to the different crop systems. This suggests that each combination of crops can favor 13 taxa, which in turn can have important implications in the development of more sustainable crop system. The previous is of great interest as several studies has shown the effect of fungal diversity on plant productivity. Our conclusions were that the introduction of vineyard or wheat in almond tree cultivation produced differences in fungi microbial communities and an increase in the fungal diversity, being the almond with wheat combination the more diverse. Different taxa were more associated with each crop system, being the combination almond with wheat, the one we had the highest number of taxa related. And this study can result in a star point for further research on the interaction of microorganisms, plants associated to crops, and the effects of intercropping in increasing the soil biodiversity. And thank you for your attention. I hope I'm on time. Yes, Professor Teca, you're perfectly in time. Thank you very much for your interesting presentation. In fact, of course, we know we can't post our questions on the chat, but we have a little bit of time for questions. So if there's anyone in the audience who wants to raise a question right now, please raise your hand, then you will have the floor. Okay, I think we can try again with Pascal to see if he can share his presentation. If everyone does his questions on the chat, then we can retry the presentation of Professor Schocker. Are you ready, Professor Schocker? Yes, but I'm really afraid to lose again the connection. So I'd like if you can share the screen for me or the presentation for me, that would be much more appreciated. Yes, I will. Thank you. And I will stop also the camera. So yes, thank you. Thank you very much. So let's cross our fingers that it works. So yeah, we were quickly maybe before so I was so I said that in fact this presentation is about termites and maybe that one way to understand how important are these organisms, it's to compare them with the others. So maybe your next slide. As you already know, the soil hosts a large diversity of organisms living inside or on the soil. So below ground or above ground, but they are also some organisms. So next slide. Yes. Yeah, next. Yes, thank you. That have also developed a very interesting strategy. They are living inside the soil, but to stay active on the ground while remaining in the ground, use the soil to build some very peculiar, very different and specific properties of soil structures. And here are some representation of this type of constructions. And that's the termite way of life, which are building above ground constructions, so the mounts or the sheetings in order to protect them from the environment. So next slide. And what's really interesting is that this construction have a huge impact on several key ecological functions and these are different special and temporal scales. So they can impact the millilogy of clay, impact the biological, physical, and chemical properties of soil aggregates. They can produce tunnels and chambers inside the soil and accumulate soil on the ground to produce sheetings and mounts. And these mounts at the largest scale constitute or shape the distribution of the nutrients at the landscape scale. And these different scales, so they will impact key ecological functions associated to the dynamics of soil and water, the gestation of carbon, the regulation of biodiversity from microbes to plants, and of course the soil fertility. Next slide please. And that's typically what can be seen in Asia and more specifically in this area, the lower Mekong basin where huge termite mounts covered by trees can be seen in a rather uniform environment, the paddy fields. Next slide. So these mounts are made of soil collected from below ground from the deeper soil layers by termites and brought to the surface so above ground. And because of this biological activity, these termite mounts are usually enriched in in a soil organic matter, so carbon, nitrogen, but also clay and cations, making these mounts like island or patches of fertility at the farm or at the landscape scale. Next slide. What's also very interesting is that these termite mounts and therefore this termite activity provide plenty of ecosystem services. First they contribute to the regulation of biodiversity. So for instance in these results we see that biodiversity is very low of course in paddy fields with only three individuals found here in this study against 27 found in termite mounts and without counting the plants, the crabs, the snakes and the plants and mushrooms available on termite mounts. Second, these higher content in carbon, nitrogen, and clay cations increase the fertility of the soil and this explains why the farmers commonly use that soil as a amendment for increasing the fertility of their land. Next slide please. In terms of food diversity and security, termite mounts are also very useful because they are used to grow different plants than rice. They can be used to grow different kinds of vegetables and here for example, pepkin on the picture on the top left and different kinds of plants and insects and mushrooms can also be found on termite mounts and those are edible and can be consumed by the population, by the villagers. Some plants found on termite mounts also have medicinal properties and can be used to treat certain diseases on our symptoms. Another interesting example is shown on the right with the cultural goods. That's clearly an aspect that is probably, no, no, please, please come back. Yes, just come back. You've been too fast. Yes, thank you. So, yeah, we have indeed very interesting interactions between termites and local beliefs. For example, with this termite mount being built on a steppe within Apagoda or below a stale with probably representing Buddha at the foot of a termite mount. So, next slide. So, in brief, we, yes, we saw that termite mounts can positively impact plenty of ecosystem services and therefore some of the sustainable development goals and especially the SDGs number 15 and 13 for the preservation of biodiversity, but also the same carbon environment well known for its emission of carbon, of greenhouse gases. We saw that because of impact positively the soil fertility, they are likely also to increase rice growth and its resistance to environmental hazards such as droughts and pests. And all of that is likely to have positive social economic impact and then to impact positively the SDGs number one, two, three, and eight. And finally, because the question of the quantification of the services provided by termites and more specifically by termite mounts is not only important in the lower beckong, but local lower Mekong basin, but also in India or in Africa or in South America, maybe. So, we can even say that termites contribute to the SDG number 17, the partnership for the goal. And this presentation is a good example because it involves scientists from Cambodia, Djibouti, but also Thailand, India and France. Next slide please. Despite the fact that these termite mounts provide many ecosystem services, this chart shows that their density is highly variable from about 14 in a natural environment in India to less than one in Thailand nowadays. And what's interesting here is also that if we plot so this density according to the GDP of the locations or country, we arrive to a very interesting representation or chart which suggests two things. First, that the better or the higher is the economy and the lower will be termite mounts and then that the less and perhaps that the less people are dependent or use these services provided by termite mounts. And also that's because most of the agriculture is made from conventional agricultural practices, we can even suggest that the higher or that termite mounts are actually threatened by conventional agricultural practices. So we can suggest two scenarios. Next slide or push please. Yes, so two scenarios. Can you push again? Yes, so our first one, so a sad scenario in red, based on the growth of the economy associated with the intensive cultivation practices that will lead to the disappearance of termite mounts and therefore on all the services they can provide to the society or next slide or green scenario based on the growth of the economy but associated to the development of diversified agroecological practices using the services provided by termite mounts. And then we can either imagine the maintenance of termite mounts, density or an increase in abundance. But the problem here is that the loss of termite mounts is likely to be irreversible without substantial efforts because dozens of years are clearly needed in order to get termite mounts on the ground and raising then the importance of to preserve and to protect these very peculiar environments. And in one way to do that is perhaps to finally to better understand and quantify all the services I've talked about or perhaps others that remain to be discovered. And this before, of course, it's too late. So thank you. Can you just next? And I would like just to thank all my colleagues who participated to do that work in this study. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Professor Sjöker. It's very nice to see that we indeed succeeded in having your presentation. It all went very smoothly. I was impressed by your results, very dramatic decays and termite mounts. But we ran a little bit out of time. I can see that there is already discussion starting on the chat. And I would like to propose that if there are any questions or comments to Professor Sjöker, please use the chat and you will can have answers soon or after the meeting so that we now can continue with the session with the next presentation. Is that okay with you, Shilja? Then the next presentation will be given by- Yes. Oksana is now closed. So she can- We can just continue now. Again, thank you very much, Professor Sjöker. We continue now with the presentation by Mrs. Naidonova. I hope I pronounced your name correct from Ukraine. And the title of your presentation will be Recovery of Soil Biodiversity on Reclaimed Drilling Paths of Soil Gaswells in the East Ukraine. Mrs. Naidonova, please, the floor is yours. Can you see my screen? Yes. Yes, please present your screen. So full size if you can. Okay, perfect. Okay. Colleagues, my talk will be in three parts. Co-author Alena Drost and Dmitry Diodin studied the physical and chemical property of soil. I studied the state of microbial synosis and Irina Lyzhenina and Nina Polcheninova studied the biodiversity of soil in vertebrates. Some statistical data. The total number of oil and gas fields in Ukraine is 350. Average number of boreholes in one oil and gas field is about 30 of 40. Area of disturbed soil on one borehole in from 5 to 15 hectares. The natural soil are mainly ordinary journalism. The purpose of our study is to assess the influence of technical reclamation on soil biodiversity, microorganisms and invertebrates and estimate its recovery rate. We studied reclaimed background soil on drilling path in southern part of eastern oil gas bearing basin of Ukraine. Terms of soil reclamation were different. This slide show allocation of soil sampling points on borehole sites. As you can see in the picture, the area of drilling site of boreholes 23 is contaminated. White streak in the image indicate contamination from drilling fluid components. We used the classical method of soil microbiology. This is a method of cultivation on dense nutrient media. On this slide you can see photos of petri dishes with colonies of microorganisms on soil, on solid selective nutrient media. Organic nitrogen assimilating bacteria on mid-peptone agar. Mineral nitrogen assimilating bacteria and actinomycids on starch ammonia agar. Fungi on Richter media. Oligotroph on starvation agar. Azatobacter on ashben media. Soil invertebrates were collected by soil excavation. 20 samples were taken at each reclaimed and controlled plots. Then invertebrates found in each sample were identified in laboratory condition. You can see zones of elevated compaction in zero to 30 centimeters layers at the borehole mouth. In the 30 to 60 centimeter layers, soil penetration resistance was much higher. In the center of the pad, you can see a strongly compacted zone. Obviously, this was a center of the most active movement of heavy vehicle and drilling equipment. The soil has elevated concentration of heavy metals, especially barium and lead derived from drilling fluids. The highest concentration of them was detected in the center of the former drilling pad. On the reclaimed three years ago site, soil compaction values were less. On the site reclaimed one and three years ago, density of topsoil corresponded to moderate and low level of physical degradation. The density of soil reclaimed seven years ago was the same at the background site. Heavy metals concentration for this site was most similar to reclaimed and background soil site. It's my part of the study. Recently reclaimed soil had much lower number of microorganisms comparing to background values. In the reclaimed 35 years ago soil, micro-organized number for all studies group was significantly lower than in the ground soil. Reduced number of microflora here is a consequence of soil pollution. The number of micro-organisms in soil borehole number 1003, which reclaimed three years ago, did not deviate in favorable direction from background values except for axinomycids. The number was twice lower in the reclaimed soil. No negative difference in micro-organism number was found on the site reclaimed seven years ago. So the degree of microbial communities disturbance depends on the age of technical reclamation and the duration of the biological stage of reclamation as well as on the presence or absence of soil pollution. The degree of deviation, the number of micro-organism in recently reclaimed soil and in soil reclaimed 35 years ago corresponds to a moderate level of biological degradation. Soil plots in other boreholes are not degraded. So the number of micro-organism in the reclaimed soil is restored to the level of the background soil in three years. The study site invertebrates of four classes were considered. The family entry rate was the richest in individual numbers. In the first post reclamation year, the soil was nearly empty. Even at the third year after disturbance, the invertebrate density was much lower than at the control sites. It has recovered by the seven years due to the high entry rate number. The first inhabitants of reclaimed soil are the larvae of phagos beetles. The lumbrisit recolonized the soil very slowly. The invertebrate alpha diversity was extremely low in the first year of the disturbance and recovered in the seventh one. The lumbrisit recolonized the soil very slowly. And in conclusion, microbiological and zoological indicator of reclaimed soil condition depend of quality of soil reclamation and duration of residual effect of soil disturbance. The technical stage of land reclamation has a detrimental effect on the soil biota. Number of soil micro-organism and invertebrate fauna has positively correlated with soil high humidity and negative correlate with soil compaction and heavy metal concentration. Recolonization of disturbed soil begins in second year by the larvae of phagos insects. The biodiversity recovery is slow and approaching initial values after seven years of reclamation. The earthworms are most vulnerable. The oligarch heat worms, lumbrisit and ketreid are recommended in indicators of the soil reclamation adequacy. And in conclusion, I would like to emphasize the important role of biological indicators of the soil quality and soil health. Microbiological and zoological indicators reflect the agri-ecological status of the reclaimed soil and should be applied during the soil monitoring at oil and gas production site. They are particularly informative of state of contamination, rate of restoration and efficiency of measurement for improvement. Thank you for your attention. And patience. Thank you very much, Mrs. Nadjo Nova. Thank you also very much for so nicely in time, but I was also impressed by your results. I think I've never seen such a huge differences between reclamation stage and the amount and the diversity of soil organisms. So very impressive. I hope there will be questions and comments to you. So again, for all the participants, please use the chat. You can ask your questions to Mrs. Nadjo Nova. As long as this presentation holds, you can have answers almost directly or after the meeting. And the presentations will also be available to all of you through our website. And then we go to the next presentation of this afternoon, which is something else. We go to urban environments. The presentation will be given by Mrs. Kathleen Slavich. And the title of her presentation will be urban soil biodiversity, a multi-city comparison. Mrs. Slavich, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. I hear somebody in the background. But thank you very much for this opportunity. Good morning, afternoon, evening. Today I'm going to talk about a topic that's rarely discussed in terms of soil biodiversity issues. And that is urban biodiversity. And usually this topic comes into discussion because we consider urban systems or urbanization to be a major cause to biodiversity loss and disturbance and soil disturbance. But today I would like to talk about why we actually need to still study urban systems and urban biodiversity. And it's very important not just for soil health as well as but also for human health. First, I would like to acknowledge my collaborators. This is an international effort. We have been studying urban soil organisms for many years. And this particular talk is about one aspect of the study that I'm going to present today. But here we have experts, taxonomic experts, students, soil ecologists from different parts of the world. So why study urban environments to begin with? Well, there's a number of reasons why we should be doing that. Obviously, even the soils are extremely disturbed. They still have organisms living in them. And I would like to just point to the last two bullet points here. Essentially, these organisms do perform or provide the same or similar ecosystem services. And also this majority of the human population that lives now in cities, a lot of the residents, they don't go out to the wilderness to, you know, reconnect with nature. For many of them, the main experience with nature, plants and animals comes from within the city. Their experience in different urban green spaces that includes parks or their own backyard, their gardens, schoolyards and so on. So the motivated by this fact, we started a network called the Global Urban Soil Ecology and Education Network. And so our main objectives in this case was to essentially study urban systems, urban soil systems, and also while doing so develop protocols that are easy to adopt in different places of the world and also can involve citizen scientists. So main science questions, obviously one of the interesting ecological questions of that with all these disturbance and soil movements, we actually create new systems. We bring together species that are not evolving together or not developing together what their interactions are. And when we study urban ecosystems, you know, the fundamental question is always about the relative importance of natural drivers versus what they call anthropogenic drivers. In this case, in terms of how they affect soil development, how they affect soil community assembly. And of course, cities are the most, the systems that are most profoundly impacted by human activities, management, disturbance, and they're continuously being impacted by humans. And these impacts, of course, are also affected by political, social, cultural, economical factors. So the social component in an urban system is extremely strong. And the part that I would like to talk today about is how this continuous human impact in different parts of the world does it result in similar properties, soil, biological, physical, chemical, and biological properties. So essentially, what we do here is we testing what's called the urban ecosystem convergence hypotheses. And that's basically what it says is that we can take an ecosystem property, in this case, a soil property, pH or soil organic matter. And if we look at on a global scale on natural systems, let's call them reference sites, we have a huge range of these, of these given property. But over time, mostly because of how humans shape their environment, these ranges will shrink and become smaller. And so the conditions become a lot more similar. One general sort of feature of the urban landscape, of course, is its extreme heterogeneity. We can look at an urban system with the bird's eye view and we immediately see different types of land uses, land covers, and they form a patchwork of these different land use types. But also we can look below ground, and we also see that our soils in an urban system changes from sort of naturally available or naturally present soil, with a natural horizon nation and soil biotope is completely engineered soils, which were put together by people for some purpose. So out of this matrix, which is based upon degrees of disturbance and management, we have chosen three what I'm going to call remnant, turf grass, ruderal, and adding to this reference, which represents the biome and the climatic region and the natural soil in certain parts of the world. And so we have been comparing these four what we call habitat types, reference, remnant, turf, and ruderal. I will keep saying that. Each of these habitat types were replicated five times in each city. And so we conducted our observations and experiments in five cities located on three continents. And so the point in this case is that we done everything the same way, the experimental setup, the sampling, and the analysis. And the data we were collecting were just basic soil data on pH, carbon, and nutrients, and so on. For biology, we looked at microbial community composition and earth forms. And for function, we were using teabags, which are nowadays are sort of more frequently used as a proxy to follow decomposition and thus biological activity. So first, abiotic data. So remember what we were saying is that in reference size, natural size, the values, the global range is higher in urban size or lower. So if we consider these four habitat types, you know, being essentially on a disturbance gradient, so this is more natural, and this is definitely very highly disturbed. We expect that these what we've used for looking at variation, global variation is coefficient of variation. So coefficient of variation is decreasing. That means the things are becoming more similar. So for soil pH, we have the five cities here. The red circles are the more natural sites, relevant in reference. The green circles are more sort of human-created habitat, sterf, and very disturbed soil. And so what we see is that regardless of the initial values, pH is increasing along this gradient, and CV coefficient of variation is decreasing, indicating convergence. Similarly, the same thing for soil organic matters. So again, even though the initial, the natural conditions are very different. Essentially, the direction or the trends are the same with the exception of South Africa. This site, obviously the natural system is a grassland, and so which had a very low soil organic matter, naturally content. So again, we saw convergence in this case. For microbes, we see variation decreasing for archaea and then fungi, but not for bacteria. And another sort of general feature was that as we were moving towards more disturbed, more open sites, ammonia oxidizers were increasing. So coming from microbes to macrophona, earthworms obviously are extremely important, except when they don't occur, and then termites will become extremely important keystone group, affecting just about everything about soil properties. So earthworms are very successful components of urban soil for now, and partially because they can move easily within the soil. And out of the earthworms that we at least know today, about 80 of them, which are what we call peregrine earthworms, they live very close to and they do very well in human environments, and some of these are indicated here that have names. So there's two questions. We had two basic questions with the earthworm communities. One is a city sales, city scale question. Do earthworm communities overlap on these different habitat types, reference, shaman, turf, and so the answer to that was different depending on the city you look at. So for instance, in Helsinki, the fact that these little polygons do not overlap indicates that they have distinct earthworm communities, whereas in Baltimore, where I live, these overlap indicates that the earthworm communities were very similar. Now, we can ask the same very questions on a regional or global scale, and now the question is how similar these earthworms are to each other, but also to their respective what we call regional species pool. So we're comparing local diversity, alpha diversity to gamma diversity, but also we're comparing the different cities among each other. So what we found in this case is that indeed, there was a higher degree of similarity regardless of which continent they were among the cities than each city to their respective regional species pool. And so this is a phenomenon often referred to as biotech homogenization, but I do want to mention that the mechanism to actually leading to these great degrees of similarity is very different in different localities. So the story is different, the result is the same. Okay, so for micro-arthopods moving from micro to mesofamina, micro-arthopods fundamentally springtails and mites showed on the other hand very distinct communities. Hello? You have one minute. One minute. Okay, communities. Both in terms of abundance, there was a lot more in reference remnant than in and also in species composition. So the three reference remnant forests have distinct communities from the more open habitat. So another successful group in cities are isopods where they are often dominated before trap materials that can become pests, in which case ecological or ecosystem service become ecosystem disservice. Do we lose a connection or? I think yes, unfortunately. I didn't do that. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Mr. Ms. Catalin? Ms. Catalin, can you hear us? No. Okay, I will give cost to next speaker. Yes, according to the summary, we were close to ending this presentation anyway. So I think also because we lost connection, please have your questions on the chat. And we can now continue with the next presentation, which is by Professor Emias Betemarium. And the title of the presentation will be a Bioscular Mycorrhizal Fungal Abundance in Dry Afromontane Forests in Northern Ethiopia. Are you available? Yes, I'm available. Can you see my screen? Thank you very much for being here. The floor is yours. Can you see my screen? I hope so. Not yet. Okay, try to share your screen again. And if you cannot, I will share for you. And you will tell me next when I have to go from one slide to the other. Yeah, okay, let me do this. No, not really. Okay, you can share it from your hand. Yes, okay. And I can see it from my hand. Yeah, hello. This is Emias Betemarium. I'm presenting from the Wododagro Forestry aircraft, Nairobi. And then I'm working for both C4 and aircraft. And then my presentation is, you know, it takes you a little bit of on the forest landscapes. And then I would like to really summarize what we found on two papers. And then I don't want to go to detail into the methods and then things we followed, because I will share the links to the two papers for audience to read. And then I'll really try to save time for discussion. Next slide, please. Yes, I think as a context, I think all of you might already know, I don't want to preach you again the values of Abacura Microsa fungi in this case. I think they are playing very critical, you know, ecosystem functions for the multiple ecosystem services we are really obtained. And then this fungi, and then in this case, we will try to really study the sport density in the root colonization are equally sensitive for host species specific, because some presenters you have seen, you know, they differ from species to species. And then there are a number of, you know, abiotic factors which also influence their density and then colonization. But I think oftentimes there is a knowledge gap in this, in this, in this topic, because when you are really measuring soil health, oftentimes we go to soil chemical properties, soil physical properties, and then you use those two. And then oftentimes, you know, we under research the soil biology, or that is another sort of interesting pillar of soil health in general. And then I'm so happy that FAO brought this topic on board for us to discuss today. Next slide, please. Yes, and then in this presentation, we have integrated the Arbaclan microids as for density root colonization in a disturbed forest gradients, and then also along, you know, elevation of gradients. So these are just two papers that I will try to go through quickly. Next slide, please. Yes, I think this is the first work we did in Northern Ethiopia, which is a remnant dry afro mountain forest ecosystem. Stay, stay very well. Slide above, please. Yes, and then just to give you from left to right, if you see, you know, it's a kind of a disturbance gradients by which, you know, the last extreme right one is where, where, you know, the forest is so much degraded. And then when you say forest degradation, it's also a loss of soil, you know, physically by erosion and then also in situ degradation of the source. So I think when when you are disturbing the above ground, one way or the other, we are also disturbing the underground system in this case, because they really work together. So this is the paper I put a link to there that you can go in and read about the details of what we found there. So what we did is really we tried to compare how this disturbance gradient in a small forest remnant really is influencing a micro isafangae. Next slide, please. Yes, I think this is just, you know, it's a big summary of, you know, one of the results we found in this, in this case is that, you know, the plant community, which we found is a really degraded plant communities. That means when an area is degraded, you found a very typical species, which are indicators of that particular ecosystem degradation. So in that case, what we found is there is a significant decrease in root colonization and then density of underground micro isafangae in a degraded system because these areas are receiving the same rain for the camp climate, same soil and then history. And then the only thing which we think varies in that system is disturbance. And then along that distance, you know, gradient, we can clearly see and then all statistically significant decline in root colonization and then the support density in a degradation. And then the typical thing that, you know, we need to really be careful about, you know, what happens in above ground because it's also affecting the below ground and the overall ecosystem health and function. So this is one of the results that I also invite, you know, my audience to go and read about. So next slide, please. So this is the second work again. And then that's also a link to the paper, which was really published just last week. Very fresh. In this case, I think, you know, if it is a typical thing that if you come to in the highlands of Ethiopia, you find a very dark spots in Googlers or in satellite inmates. And you may wonder, what are these black spots? And then these black spots are oftentimes, you know, the Ethiopian Orthodox church remnants, because in the churches, you don't cut trees, you keep them as much as possible. So if you look at just in the middle of all these three places, you see one is right on the post and then in the middle, then you find those churches. Then around them, you find forests. And then when you go away from the church, you find a very degraded landscape or a converted landscape. So I found, we thought that this are really interesting, you know, biodiversity hotspots really to think of, you know, for restoration or to really understand what's happening in a natural system compared to, you know, human and, you know, changed land use systems. There was a very interesting studies in terms of what happens in terms of biomass, in terms of biodiversity of tree and then, you know, species where there was really scant information about what happens also on the ground. So this is what we really studied in that area. And then we stratified the area in terms of, you know, in the highlands and the middle elevation and also on the lowlands to see how this what's happening in a low elevation gradient. Yeah, next slide please. So adding the key result is we found is that, you know, the micro density is really decreasing with with decreasing elevation. And then, you know, one of the idea, the justification we have that in the highlands, you find a lot of degradation, a lot of soil erosion. And then also the temperature is could be very low, very cold sometimes. And then you don't have a well developed deep soils and then fertile soil systems in the highlands compared to the lowland area forest, this remnant forest. And then also, it is also very species specific as I said, and then in most of the species which are with a lot of biomass and road systems and underground systems like FICA species, they are largely found on the lowlands. So it's a combination of the species and then in general, it is the ecosystem. So this is also a very typical, you know, process we found in this kind of fragmented forest systems. However, the elevation don't make it really interesting to take from the forests of the site to understand what happens in this kind of landscape, particularly if you are also projecting what will happen if you are really restoring, you know, a greater landscape or for, you know, agricultural landscape into some systems. And this kind of benchmark sites could really help you to really validate models and then also really understand what we should really expect from this kind of, you know, interesting natural systems. Because oftentimes when you have models, when you run them, they will give you your results. But I think it is really important to have this kind of benchmark sites to have a long term understanding in what's happening in the future. And then my last slide, go next slide please. So I have, I have, I think key, key conclusions is really the evidence applicable for our ecosystem restoration, particularly I said, also agricultural system, biodiversity and climate, that is really very important. And then I should reiterate what Mr. Raheim said from UNCCD yesterday, that you know, I think cure is really better than, what did he say, cure is better than remedy. So in that case, I think we need to be careful about some of the very key ecosystems. And then it is much cheaper and then also technically feasible to protect some ecosystems, not to degrade, instead of degrading and then restoring. So restoration have some potential, because now the UN decade on ecosystem restoration, adding restoration is becomes one of the very strong keyword coming up. However, we need to really be careful to keep the right balance because we need to avoid as much as possible degradation. We need to reduce degradation as much as possible. And then the last option could be no restoration, because it is costly. And then also sometimes there are a lot of uncertainties around that. And then, of course, I'm not discouraging restoration because we have huge lands which are already degraded that needs our restoration attention, so to say, but this undegreded site, particularly in the highlands of Ethiopia and then places like Latin Africa are very few. And then I think they really require a kind of, you know, conservation and attention, I would say. Yes. And then in terms of research, and then also I think more research is really required in this field, because as I said from the beginning, and then it's a lot is about soil physical and chemical properties when you talk of soil health, and I think the biological pillar need also critical attention. And then if you look at also the atlas of bio, soil biology, and then you see that in most of the disturbance on soil biology is happening where the hotspots of biodiversity also exist. So in that case, I think we need to also be careful about to, you know, when we come to conservation in this case. And then I think we need to have also enough evidence on the functions and values of soil biology in general, and then Microsoft fungi so that, you know, we could attract enough investment. And then during the plenary, if you have seen, I think there are so many people saying that, you know, the private sector and others would like to invest. However, we need to really value, holistically value, the benefits of soil biodiversity. If you just look at it from biodiversity angle, you might get a certain income or positive return. If you look at it from land, you can add value. If you look at it from climate, you will add another value. I think oftentimes, we are a little bit shy in terms of, you know, quantifying the ecosystem services that we are having from this kind of investment. And then I think that is what I would like to really recommend. And then of course, the academia also need to take this topic critically because we have so many masters and PhD students coming up. And then I think they need to be, you know, courageous enough to pick up on soil biology as an important subject. And then with that, I will end my presentation. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you very much, Dr. Petri. Very interesting talk. I think that's one of the most original examples of an ecosystem services provided by churches, as you showed, these nice black spots. We have a few minutes. Let's improvise a little bit. We were cut from Mrs. Kathleen Schlafege. And she has only one last summarizing slide to share with us. So I would propose, Mrs. Schlafege, that you try to show that slide so you can end your talk like you were prepared to end it. And as long as you are doing that, I think we have a minute for a question. Maybe any one of you can raise your hand if you have a question for Dr. Bietmaria. Okay. So can I talk now? I don't see. I don't need to. I actually, it's a it's a bulleted summarizing slide. So I don't need to share it. I can just convey it. I can tell you and obviously everything is recorded so people can look at it. So unfortunately, there was a power outage and so that's Murphy's laws. But essentially what I wanted to show you is that urban soils are also alive. There is a beach biota in urban systems. And so we need to study them and we need to, you know, discover what kind of ecosystem services they provide. They function very similarly as in everywhere else. The other point I wanted to make is that unfortunately our knowledge is very, very uneven. So where urbanization is taking place today is our areas, there's huge gaps where we don't have any information even on natural soil systems. So in Africa, South America, so different parts, a lot of our data come from temperate regions, very restricted to temperate regions and mostly from Europe. Actually where there's a rich tradition of soil biodiversity studies. And so there are huge gaps about that and where this is happening right now, losing soil biodiversity. We do not have much information. The third point is that as I mentioned, this is the way to this is one way to sort of recognize people to nature. And so yesterday we heard that once people learn something, they start caring about it. And so I think this is important. And finally in cities, I believe, health is so it is even more important in terms of human health than anywhere else. And so therefore it's very important to sort of study and convey this information, bring together all the stakeholders, urban planners, scientists, residents, conservation organizations to sort of be on the same page about this and understand the importance so that we can create sustainable and healthy cities. So thanks for the opportunity to summarize. Thank you very much. It was very interesting talk. It's nice to see also functions of soil biodiversity in urban environment because then they come so close that people can experience them. Thank you very much for your contribution. And again, of course, also Dr. Betemarian, thank you very much for your contribution. I hope there will be questions to you from the chat. And then we can go to the last presentation of this session. And that presentation will be given by Ms. Christina Menta. And the title of her talk will be Soil Monitoring Using Arthropote Adaptation to Soil, the Case of QBSR Index. Ms. Menta, please the floor. Yes, I'm here. Can you see my presentation? Yes, we can. Perfect. Okay, we can start. Good morning and good afternoon, everybody. And thank you to the organizer for this opportunity. And my presentation aims to address some aspects on soil biodiversity with a particular focus on arthropods and earthworms in particular, that play key roles in maintaining soil growth. And in this context, the safeguard of sulfona fits into the goal 15 of the 2030 agenda. And this is, in my opinion, a challenge that we cannot ignore. And as known, soil biodiversity exceeds that of other terrestrial systems by orders of magnitude, particularly at the microbial scale, but not only also soil invertebrates such as nematodes can reach high abundance, but they remain significantly undervalued despite their role in soil functioning and the possibility that we use these animals for soil monitoring. We can quickly define sulfona in different ways, considering the size of animals, the roles that these animals play in the soil, and the time that they spend in the soil. And these aspects are really, really important in the bio-indication approach. Zoolocenosis comprises invertebrates recognized fundamental for soil functioning, such as earthworms involved in the increase of soil porosity or water regulation organic matter, the composition and translocation. But the action of the animals is in relation of the weight and the time that these animals spend in the soil. And as you know, the distribution of sulfona is driven by several factors. Organic matter is one of the most important factors that influence generally positively the presence of many groups, but also soil porosity, pollution, and other features. And in addition, some groups display a curious aggregate behavior. We can find thousands of specimens in a site and some centimeter away. We can discover only few specimens. And the rhizosphere is an amazing word. The several substances released by the roots attract bacteria, fungi, and consequently many other organisms live in the microcosm, finding a favorable environment in terms of organic matter, content, prey, or refuge. And in agricultural ecosystems, we can highlight some practices that can, that improve soil fauna diversity and vice versa, some orders that affect the soil living community negatively. Applying sustainable soil management, we can act on the factor that drives soil fauna distribution. At the manner or applying marching, we increase organic matter able for soil fauna directly as for the resources, but also increasing microflora community. And the contamination can affect the soil animals negatively, but also compaction, using EV tractor or machinery destroying the pores where soil fauna lives. And tillage, tillage has a generally a dramatic impact on soil invertebrates, but the effect depends on the depth and the plug-in and the soil type that we have to consider. So in the maintenance of soil fauna diversity, cover crops avoiding the bare soil condition play a key role, increasing biomass input to the soil. And the roles of the plants reduce compaction and the combination of no-tillage and cover crops enhancing water availability, crop productivity and soil biodiversity. But the positive effect of cover crops depends also on the species or consociation that we consider. In this case, in a study submitted, where we consider the effects of different cover crops or in earthworms in particular, the earthworms community, you can see that the abundance and the dimension of animals, the weight in terms of weight were significantly lower in the control, no cover, but comparing the four covers and consociation, there were differences between them. And in this study carried out in northern of Italy, we evaluate the soil arthropod data in two farms, comparing conventional agriculture, tillage and conservation agriculture with no-tillage and the use of cover. And in the bar charts, you can see that some crops such as wheat, for example, showed higher arthropod abundance in the conservation agriculture in the farm one, but this result was not confirmed in the farm two. And this can depend on the different type of soil or organic matter content on the use of irrigation. And if we consider the number of groups, we obtain another suggestion. The number of groups was higher in conservation agriculture, and these highlights the sustainable practices can improve biodiversity considerably. And when we focus on specific groups of invertebrates, we can obtain different indication in relation to the sensitivity of group. The first chart refers to my abundance shows higher value in conservation agriculture compared to conventional for many crops. But for the colambula, the results are not so clear, are not so evident, showing that the two groups can give us different information on the impact of the two types of management. And in addition, different stages of the biological cycle can react to soil management in a different way. In this feature, we can observe the high sensitivity to tillage of earthworms, evident in both the years of the test in the three farms. And when not till and cover crops show higher numbers of individuals when compared to tillage system. But in my opinion, more interesting information can be obtained considering different stages of biological cycles. As you can see in the second chart, in this case, the higher number of juveniles in not tillage that suggests that the earthworm community is alive and really healthy. And let me introduce the QBSR, my last part of my presentation. The QBSR is an index developed at Varma University, and it is based on soil microartropos. This index is based on this concept that in a soil characterized by good health and good quality, in terms of soil organic matter content, structure, rise in the sphere, and so on, we can find more microartropos adapted to soil. And the vulnerability of these animals in relation to their adaptation level of soil is the key concept on which this index is based. Soil perturbation doesn't allow the survival of these animals. And really briefly, QBSR based on the microartropos community, separating using the ecomorphological approach in my, as you can see in this table, some groups reported only one in my score, no adaptation, or five or 10 intermediate adaptation or 20 maximum adaptation, but other groups reported a range of in my score, one, five, one, 10, one, 10, 20. And in this case, the reason of this case is that we have different species that show different level of adaptation to soil. And the QBSR is the sum of the maximum in my score for each group. And we can use this first approach. We can use the MI score for obtaining a first indication on the effect of different management in an agricultural system. In this graph, you can see that conventional agriculture shows a percentage of groups lower than conservation agriculture with MI 20. And when we consider only one graph, in particular, this is in relation to the colambula, to the sprinters, the biograph of the right, we can see that the percentage of in my 10 and 20 maximum adaptation to soil and highest vulnerability is even higher compared to conventional agriculture. So and this index has proven ability to show soil suffering levels in terms of soil degradation, compaction or pollution or other trees. But it can help as in highlighting soil restoration process or to develop sustainable techniques helping soil environment. In the first graph, different cover crops alone or in combination were applied and the results show differences in terms of soil output community and in particular QBSR. But in the other graph, you can see the restoration phase after a catastrophic event and the QBSR index highlights evident differences between flooded and not flooded areas. This is a study that we conduct in India. And just the last slide, quite recently we collected 14 international papers published in which QBSR was applied. And we identified eight categories considering land uses. We noticed that agricultural land and the soil affected by degradation show the lowest QBSR values, while grassland or orchard or wood highlight the highest index value. And considering the consistent number of studies in which the QBSR was applied, we founded a working group inside the Italian Society of Soil Science with the aims to collect the people that are applying this index, develop an application protocol standardized, organize training and produce international and national for Italy and international database. In this symposium, we present the working group and we have some communications and poster that reporting the application of the QBSR in Italy, but not only. And for information about this index, please contact me. And thank you very much for your attention and for this opportunity. Thank you very much, Mrs. Manta. Thank you very much for this very impressive and interesting talk about soil microarthropods that are my pet animals. I always like to talk about that. Very interesting results. Thank you, Peter. There are already questions to you coming in through the chat. So please have a look at that. That applies to all the presenters. Questions are coming into the chat and have a look at it. We will come to the end of this session, but we can leave the chat open for a short while. So if people still have some questions or comments, you can bring it in and presenters can give answers. But the moment we close the chat, it's over. So you can leave the session, of course, if you like, but we will keep it open a little bit maybe for some additional questions. I would say it's close to four o'clock, but let's give room for anyone who likes to say something about particular presentations or in general. There is now a moment to do so. In the meantime, we'll keep the chat open for particular questions to particular presenters. Is there anyone who want to raise her or his hand to say something? Well, I can say something about the forthcoming days. I would like to have a question if it's possible, Peter. Yes, of course, Natalia. Please. So thank you very much to all the presenters. Indeed, it has been a very interesting session. And I have a question, a general question to all of you. And I would like to hear from you because we have seen very different approaches to understand the status of soil biodiversity, but also practices that could enhance soil biodiversity. So I would like to hear from you, which is your proposal to be a scale up to restore soil biodiversity? What you think the international community can do to restore ecosystems, as it was said, to recover the services provided by soil biodiversity and to restore the communities. So I would like to hear from all the speakers what you think and what are your proposals. Thank you so much. Well, the words to the presenters, the speakers, any one of those who would like to comment on this question? Mrs. Slavic. Please unmute Mrs. Slavic. You can unmute yourself now. Thanks. Sorry. Thank you. Well, so I can speak about the urban systems. And I think it's not going to be like one general global effort. Maybe it can be. But these are issues that are really solved locally. And I think what we have been seeing, of course, is that because of these cultural, economical, financial, social differences of how people relate to, say, green spaces, what their favorite landscape type is and how they want to manage it. It's very different in different parts of the world. And so I think we can promote, just as we did in this conference, the general message of the importance of soil biodiversity and the various ecosystem services. But essentially, because especially in the urban system, it's the people who own the land. It's the people who manage the land, the parcels, the residents, the schools, the churches. And so these are very different views politically, culturally. So I think a lot of it is sort of ground up and ground level would work in this case. Okay. Thank you very much. Am I correct, Dr. Beethoven, that you also like to say something? Yeah. Thank you very much. And then I think it is a valid question. And then so what and then what do we need to do? I think if I take you back to the plenary, if you are there, and then if you look at also the interest of the private sector, for instance, to invest in soil biology in general, they picked like two of them, three of them in fact, presented about agroforestry, for instance. So we need to really try to diversify our source of food, fiber, and then all other ecosystem services. So we need to, as much as possible, rate using the monoculture kind of systems. Like, for instance, if you have a very homogeneous cereal crops compared to, you know, having few trees on that landscape, it matters to me. So I think we need to be, as much as possible, as a rule of thumb, I would say, you know, the diverse activities, the diverse ecosystem, we are really, you know, putting in place. I think that is really one way of really making soil biodiversity working to me. So I think we need, and then also the other, in my last slide, I said that we need to also value it properly. Because why is the value of, you know, COVID case, it is related to our activities, in terms of disease burden on humans. It is biologically related again, that's some of the hypothesis. So in that case, we need to make sure that we need to look at it in terms of, yes, thanks. Anyone else? Then I would like to thank you all very much. I hope you will stay with us the forthcoming days. You have still two very interesting days to come. You have a plenary about the status of the global soil biodiversity, but we also have a plenary about soil biodiversity on the global agenda. And in particular, it might be interesting for many of you to stay also at the end of the meeting where Mrs. Zoe Lindo also will give a reflection on this particular theme, which will be one of the last session of the Global Symposium. So very well recommended to all of you. I've understood that this session was participated by more than 100 participants. So I think this is really a success. Sometimes it has advantages to have a virtual meeting like this. I also understood that the plenary of yesterday was attended by more than 5,000 participants, which is when we were organizing this meeting, we counted all the five to 600, which is already a success to have all these people coming to Rome. Now we have about 10 times as much. So in terms of having the message abroad and to share all these interesting signs, I think we are part of a very interesting and very historical meeting. And again, I also like to thank Julia and Natalia for making this all possible because there's a lot of work done before we could have this session, not only by having this session organized well, but also preparing the talks, getting everything done, arranged all on a virtual basis. So I think you did a very good job. Thank you very much, Natalia. Thank you very much, Julia. Thank you all for participating. The presenters in particular, I hope you will stay with us. And with these words, I would like to close this session and also the chat. Bye. Thank you. Bye.