# Characterization of land use impacts on soil biodiversity

Adrien Burg, Arnaud Hélias, Amandine Pastor

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Adrien Burg, Arnaud Hélias, Amandine Pastor. Characterization of land use impacts on soil biodiversity. MCV 2025, Nov 2025, Bordeaux, France. hal-05385098

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https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05385098v1

Submitted on 27 Nov 2025

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Characterization of land use impacts on soil biodiversity

Burg Adrien, Pastor Amandine, Hélias Arnaud

a ITAP, Univ Montpellier, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, France

b Elsa, Research Group for Environmental Lifecycle and Sustainability Assessment,
Montpellier, France

Quantifying human impacts on biodiversity remains complex in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) due to the multidimensional nature of biodiversity. The main human driver of biodiversity loss is land use and land use change, leading to habitat degradation. Current LCA indicators measure land use impacts on biodiversity via changes in species composition (such as the potential disappeared fraction of species). Doing so, they focus on limited taxonomic groups (plants, terrestrial vertebrates), ignoring soil organisms (bacteria, fungi, nematodes, arthropods, annelids) even though soil ecosystems are known to host most global species. This limitation is currently explained with a lack of data on soil taxa (e.g., IUCN Red Lists). Molecular tools, such as DNA metabarcoding could increase species coverage but their implementation in methods cannot be done without considering limitations such as DNA remanence in soils or the important taxonomic impediment for taxa beyond small animals and microorganisms. Additionally, the current land use impact assessment framework needs refinement to properly incorporate soil microorganisms, as foundational ecological concepts like species boundaries, individual counts, and extinction dynamics don't directly translate to microbial communities.

Work objectives include:

- Reviewing existing biodiversity and soil quality indicators published in the literature, selecting relevant ones to support decision making in nature conservation, assessing their capacity to be extended to soil biodiversity.

- Exploring the representation of habitats for soil organisms, its relationship with soil quality and how to integrate it in the current land use classification.

- Exploring existing data sources for soil biodiversity, evaluating their spatial and taxonomic coverage, as well as their ability to discriminate land use related practices.

-Combining relevant indicators with existing data sources to develop operational characterization factors to be used at scale in LCA.

This work aims to bridge the gap between soil ecology and environmental assessment by integrating soil organisms into life cycle impact assessment methods. Such cross-disciplinary approach improves decision making for environmental impact assessment and sustainable soil management. Finally, this new approach could inform agricultural and forestry policies and support corporate sustainability reporting.

Keywords: biodiversity, LCIA, soil ecology, species, microorganisms