Session: CrossDiv Symposium--Deep, Wide, and Alive: Expanding Our View of Soils in a Changing Environment

Title: CrossDiv Symposium--Deep, Wide, and Alive: Expanding Our View of Soils in a Changing Environment

Session Description: Soil science research extends to scales of inquiry that span space and time in order to capture the true complexity of soil. Microbial discoveries in deep substratum, identification of interactions between plant roots and microbes in weathered regolith, the detection of rapid broad-scale soil fabric and hydrological changes in response to climate, the expansion of ecological and critical zone monitoring networks (e.g., NEON, CZO) across continental-scales, geochemical and mineralogical discoveries in astropedology, and the advances in understanding soil-organism coevolution through deep time represent tangible examples of expanding soil science knowledge. These advances continue to call into question traditional pedon descriptions that extend only to depths of 1-2 m, the focus on highly-localized investigations that may overlook the context of broader-scale spatial or temporal phenomena, and the lack of integration into models that simulate hydrology, land-atmospheric interactions, and climate at regional or global scales. This interdisciplinary session aims to bring together scientists working in soil science, ecology, biogeochemistry, critical zone science, hydrology, geology, geography, and related fields to expand our disciplinary, spatial, and temporal view of soils.