Funded by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC).

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) funded two projects to characterize soil biodiversity and its relationships with soil physico-chemical parameters and land use. The Atlantic provinces project is led by Dr. Louis-Pierre Comeau and co-led by Dr. Claudia Goyer, both with AAFC's Fredericton Research and Development Centre. Soil nematode diversity and soil respiration assessments are carried out at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

The aim of the Atlantic Canada nematode project is to evaluate the composition and abundance of nematode communities in New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador, and to explore the relationships between community composition, ecoregion, land use, and soil physico-chemical properties. Nematodes make useful bioindicators of soil quality: they occur in all soils, are diverse and abundant, respond quickly to management disturbance, are influenced by soil physical and chemical properties, and contribute to nutrient turnover.

Alongside this, soil carbon is assessed through respiration measurements, asking what we understand about changes in carbon cycling under land conversion, whether different methods of managing converted land can increase carbon, and how this knowledge can better inform management decisions.