Soil biodiversity module of MBAG project

This pilot project is a submodule of MBAG, a monitoring network for Biodiversity in the Agricultural area of Flanders, aiming at monitoring status and trends of soil biodiversity in croplands and grasslands, in close collaboration with ILVO. In the framework of the Flemish soil carbon monitoring network (Cmon), extra topsoil samples were taken for soil biodiversity research. This methodological pilot study will investigate 450 of these frozen Cmon samples using a state-of-the-art eDNA soil metacarcoding approach. We apply international protocols (LUCAS, SoilBON) in order to compare results for micro-organisms, fungi and macro-invertebrates with other soil biodiversity surveys like LUCAS biodiversity and Biodiversa+ subpilot.