Harnessing soil biodiversity to promote human health in cities

Abstract

Biodiversity is widely linked to human health, however, connections between human health and soil biodiversity in urban environments remain poorly understood. Here, we stress that reductions in urban soil biodiversity elevate risks to human health, but soil biodiversity can improve human health through pathways including suppressing pathogens, remediating soil, shaping a beneficial human microbiome and promoting immune fitness. We argue that targeted enhancement of urban soil biodiversity could support human health, in both outdoor and indoor settings. The potential of enhanced urban soil biodiversity to benefit human health reflects an important yet understudied field of fundamental and applied research.

Impact of Plant–Microbe Interactions with a Focus on Poorly Investigated Urban Ecosystems—A Review

“…Conspicuous human migration into urban areas led to the formation of increasingly large cities and urban agglomerations, which turned these areas into hot spots of anthropogenic effects on ecosystems [1,2]. Urbanization strongly affects ecological processes (often deleteriously) because it is associated with a decrease in green spaces, loss of natural habitats, increased rates of species extinction, a greater prevalence of invasive and exotic species, and anthropogenic pollutant accumulation [2,3].…”

“…Urban green spaces are areas of land covered by vegetation within the urban environment. These spaces include public green spaces (such as flowerbeds, parks, riverbanks, green paths, and other public places with grass, trees, and shrubs) and private areas (gardens intended for private use, green spaces belonging to corporate organizations, and indoor potted plants) [3][4][5].…”

“…Multiple studies link biodiversity to human health [3,10,11]. Urbanization and "macro-biodiversity" loss seem related to a depletion in microbial diversity, which could negatively affect the microbial communities supporting human health and underpin/reinforce the so-called "biodiversity hypothesis".…”

“…Lower exposure to biodiversity may cause the human immune system to be poorly trained and over-sensitive to normally harmless agents, such as dust particles and pollen [12][13][14]. Conversely, biodiverse green spaces improve human health by favoring exposure to different beneficial environmental microbes [3]. Soils are among the richest and most abundant reserves of environmental microorganisms and supplement the human microbiota in different ways, including via direct contact, transfer of ambient dust, contact with pets, and household dust [12,[15][16][17][18][19].…”

Bioenergetic mapping of ‘healthy microbiomes’ via compound processing potential imprinted in gut and soil metagenomes

“…If the functional composition of microbiota varies predictably along environmental gradients, then through design, management, and behavior we should be able to modulate our exposure to health-promoting versus disease-associated microbes. Soils, in particular, can represent a rich source of microbial diversity with potential to support human health (Banerjee and van der Heijden, 2022; Li et al; Liddicoat et al, 2018; Liddicoat et al, 2020; Ottman et al, 2018; Sun et al, 2023). Microbiota in plant-soil systems are shaped by macro-scale factors including climate, soil characteristics, vegetation composition, diversity, land use and management (Delgado-Baquerizo et al, 2018; Fierer, 2017).…”