THE year 2001 and the next are part of a worldwide programme to protect Earth’s diverse forms of life known as the International Biodiversity Observation Year.

During this window in time, scientists and educators are joining forces to increase communication of science-based information about biodiversity to a broad audience.

The International Biodiversity Observation Year is taking place in the first two years of a century that scientists predict will see unprecedented changes to Earth’s ecosystems.

Some of these changes are happening beneath our feet in the soil and the layer of plant debris on the soil surface called litter. There is not one experimental plot anywhere in the world for which all species of creatures living in soil and litter have been described. But that is about to change.

During November and December, scientists at 32 sites in 20 countries will gather field collections as part of a global experiment to survey biodiversity in litter. As part of their work for International Biodiversity Observation Year, they intend to analyse the role played by the creatures living in soil and litter in an important ecosystem function, decomposition. All of the scientists participating in the project are volunteering their time to place the litterbags in the field and collect them.

As part of the Global Litter Invertebrate Decomposition Experiment (GLIDE), last August and September the researchers placed mesh bags of leaf litter on the ground of diverse ecosystems, from tropical to boreal forests, from savannahs to Arctic tundra. Over the next two months they will retrieve a subset of these bags for analysis of global patterns of decomposition and the species involved.

Dr Diana Wall of Colorado State University, who heads GLIDE, expects the study to advance understanding of large-scale distributions of the miniscule creatures that dwell in soil and litter. Even at small scales, biodiversity in soils and litter is poorly known.

The majority of these species are invisible to the naked eye since they live in dark underground habitats, and many are microscopic. The lack of information on below-ground species is partly due to their sheer abundance and diversity. For many soil and litter groups, less than 10 per cent of species have been described scientifically. Said Wall, “There may be hundreds of species and thousands of individuals in a handful of soil or litter.”

Despite limited knowledge about the identity of individual species of soil and litter creatures, soil biologists know that assemblies of these species play crucial roles in the functioning of ecosystems, including decomposing organic matter and recycling nutrients to the soil.

“The enormous resources required to survey below ground biodiversity has prohibited assessments across multiple biomes in the past,” Wall explained.

But now Dr Wall and her colleagues are utilising creative approaches to make this first global scale assessment of litter biodiversity possible. They are able to use information from established international networks offering extensive geographical coverage, baseline data, expertise, and infrastructure such as the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility program.

A state-of-the-art technology called BioTrack is being used to accelerate identification of the tens of thousands of individuals they expect to find. BioTrack, directed by GLIDE co-chair, Dr Mark Dangerfield at Maquarie University in Australia, scans each specimen and creates a high-resolution image. Computer software then compares the image with a virtual collection to provide a match and identify the specimen.

The researchers expect that within a year GLIDE will yield new data on the animals involved in various stages of litter decomposition across different latitudes and ecosystem types. This information will help determine how significant is the high diversity of litter fauna for the functioning of ecosystems and how it is influenced by the environment.

Other core projects of the International Biodiversity Observation Year include cataloging the wild relatives of the world’s crops, a travelling exhibit called “Biodiversity 911: Saving Life on Earth,” and Lost Worlds, a large format IMAX film on biodiversity and conservation.