The role of AI-enhanced microscopy in soil biodiversity assessment: Advancing soil security, connectivity and governance with implications for the European Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience, and global agendas

Abstract

As the cornerstone of civilization, soils are fundamental to human well-being and planetary health, yet they remain largely invisible within public awareness and policy frameworks that predominantly focus on climate change, landscapes, water and above-ground biodiversity. This oversight contributes to ongoing soil degradation, despite increasing international recognition of their non-renewable nature and critical roles in food security, climate regulation, socio-economic resilience, and national stability. Soil biodiversity both drives and reflects soil condition: microbial and faunal communities mediate pH buffering, nutrient cycling, water retention, and carbon stabilization, while shifts in abiotic factors, in turn, reshape the biological network. Due to this reciprocal linkage, biodiversity serves as a sensitive, integrative indicator of soil health and as a concept that non-experts can intuitively understand. Within the context of the European Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive, this paper examines high-throughput approaches, particularly AI-enhanced microscopy, as scalable pathways to connect soil condition data with decision-makers and inform evidence-based governance. By making soil life visible and measurable, these technologies bridge the gap between expert knowledge and public understanding, enabling the translation of scientific insights into actionable conservation and management strategies. Central to this framework, Soil Community Hubs serve as vital platforms for collecting local soil biodiversity metrics, enhancing stakeholder connectivity, fostering adaptive soil management and regulation across diverse pedoclimatic contexts, and reframing the perception of soils as dynamic, living systems essential to human well-being.