Agricultural expertise in the science and technology of integrated management of soils, organisms, water, nutrition, and other ecosystem factors offers organizational and procedural insights for potential application in wild ecosystems, particularly where transitional solutions are necessary to foster restoration. Conservation of genetic diversity is a major goal in environmental management. Domesticated plants, animals, and microbes evolved from wild ancestors and today constitute unique and valuable sources of ancestral genes that could be used in restoring elements and benefits of diversity to natural populations, or in providing new disease-resistance potential to species through biotechnology. Restoration of certain species to remediated ecosystems from such germplasm banks is conceivable. There is a critical need for understanding and managing the diversity and ecology of microbes in wild ecosystems.
Microbes constitute essential interfaces in the functional web of ecosystems.
Wild organisms and their domesticated relatives often share similar microbial partners in mutualistic-beneficial, parasitic, and other symbiotic relationships. These microbes and their ecological relationships have been studied most extensively in agriculture. Potential wildland applications of such knowledge include disease control, soil remediation, nutrient cycling, and stand regeneration. International programs on agrotechnology transfer and renewable resources, such as those sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development, the USDA Soil Conservation Service, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, have developed detailed knowledge on the characteristics of soils, particularly in the tropics, that could possibly support management and remediation in wildlands. Some of this knowledge has been developed and organized to facilitate its application to problem solving in environmentally related areas in different parts of the world.