BISES Project – Urban Soil Biodiversity and Sustainable Cities

The aim of the project is to better understand the structure and functioning of soil communities in urban, peri-urban and rural environments, and their relationships with local environmental conditions. Sampling was conducted across a network of sites representative of different urban land uses, including green spaces, roadsides, community gardens, wastelands and peri-urban agricultural areas.

Standardized protocols were used to collect multiple biological compartments of soil biodiversity: Collembola: sampled through soil coring and extraction, identified at species or genus level. Ants: collected using Barber pitfall traps and identified to species level. Other soil mesofauna: arthropods captured in the same trapping devices and grouped into higher taxonomic categories.