PARENT SESSION
Thursday, August 10, 8:00-11:30 am
Symposium 17 - Biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and human health
Ballroom B, Ballroom Level, Cook Convention Center
Organized by: AR Townsend (alan.townsend@colorado.edu) and O Sala

This symposium will present an overview of how human-driven changes in biodiversity and ecosystem processes can affect human health, and how ecologists can help understand and potentially mitigate the health effects of global environmental change.

Soil biodiversity and links to human health.

Wall, Diana^*,1, ¹ Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

ABSTRACT- The inclusion of soil organisms (both microbes and fauna) as causal agents of human disease is generally considered as limited to tropical or less developed countries, but it is a global issue. Information on the triggers, biotic and/or abiotic, that drive the incidence of soil organism-related disease is fragmented and disciplinary. The pathology of the soil organism in causing disease is often studied in isolation and rarely related to its natural history or ecology. Soil biodiversity in less disturbed systems is determined by multiple factors over evolutionary time, such as vegetation (chemical quality, quantity, plant species, and community composition), soil physical and chemical properties, and climate. Environmental factors leading to higher incidence of disease, such as disturbance to soil, climate change, increasing human population, poverty, and the resulting impact on soil foodwebs should be integrated to better predict disease occurrence from soil organisms. Disturbances to soil can impact ecosystem functioning, alter soil biodiversity, and sometimes appears to be associated with the loss of ecosystem services such as control of pathogen-predator outbreaks. Understanding the relationships between soil biodiversity and human diseases is a new interdisciplinary challenge for sustainable management of ecosystems.

Key words: soil organisms, biodiversity, disease