THE SOIL ECOSYSTEM

When gardening in my small backyard in the city, I was always cautious and careful, not knowing what bugs I would encounter. I would remind myself, and the children around me, that we were invading their home, so we could not kill any of them. After taking both the biology and envioronmental classes, I started wondering why those organisms were in the soil anyway. What did they do there? Were they helpful to my garden or not? Should I welcome them or try to get rid of them? From those classes I learned that the organisms in an ecosytem all have a niche and ususally interact with each other. All living things need to take in nutrients, and the plants play an important role in this, but so do bacteria and fungi. I wondered what other organisms were in the soil and what their niche was. This lead me to investigate the soil and the organisms that live within it.


The following links will give you plenty of information about the soil ecosystem. ENJOY!

Soil Organisms (Middle School Level)
Soil Organisms (College Level)
Soil Systems (College Level)




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