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Soil contamination in nearby natural areas mirrors that in urban greenspaces worldwide

  • Yu Rong Liu
  • , Marcel G.A. van der Heijden
  • , Judith Riedo
  • , Carlos Sanz-Lazaro
  • , David J. Eldridge
  • , Felipe Bastida
  • , Eduardo Moreno-Jiménez
  • , Xin Quan Zhou
  • , Hang Wei Hu
  • , Ji Zheng He
  • , José L. Moreno
  • , Sebastian Abades
  • , Fernando Alfaro
  • , Adebola R. Bamigboye
  • , Miguel Berdugo
  • , José L. Blanco-Pastor
  • , Asunción de los Ríos
  • , Jorge Duran
  • , Tine Grebenc
  • , Javier G. Illán
  • Thulani P. Makhalanyane, Marco A. Molina-Montenegro, Tina U. Nahberger, Gabriel F. Peñaloza-Bojacá, César Plaza, Ana Rey, Alexandra Rodríguez, Christina Siebe, Alberto L. Teixido, Nuria Casado-Coy, Pankaj Trivedi, Cristian Torres-Díaz, Jay Prakash Verma, Arpan Mukherjee, Xiao Min Zeng, Ling Wang, Jianyong Wang, Eli Zaady, Xiaobing Zhou, Qiaoyun Huang, Wenfeng Tan, Yong Guan Zhu, Matthias C. Rillig, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo
  • Huazhong Agricultural University
  • Agroscope
  • University of Zurich
  • University of Alicante
  • University of New South Wales
  • CEBAS- CSIC - Centre of Edafology and Applied Biology of Segura 
  • Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • Free University of Berlin
  • Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB)
  • University of Melbourne
  • Universidad Mayor
  • Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad
  • Obafemi Awolowo University
  • Complutense University
  • INRAE
  • CSIC - Biological Mission of Galicia
  • University of Coimbra
  • Slovenian Forestry Institute
  • Washington State University Pullman
  • University of Pretoria
  • Universidad de Talca
  • Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
  • Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
  • Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso
  • Colorado State University
  • Universidad del Bío-Bío
  • Banaras Hindu University
  • Northeast Normal University
  • Agricultural Research Organization of Israel
  • CAS - Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography
  • State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Soil Health and Green Remediation
  • CAS - Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences
  • CSIC - Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Seville
  • Universidad Pablo de Olavide
  • Universidad Católica del Norte

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

145 Citations (Scopus)
2 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Soil contamination is one of the main threats to ecosystem health and sustainability. Yet little is known about the extent to which soil contaminants differ between urban greenspaces and natural ecosystems. Here we show that urban greenspaces and adjacent natural areas (i.e., natural/semi-natural ecosystems) shared similar levels of multiple soil contaminants (metal(loid)s, pesticides, microplastics, and antibiotic resistance genes) across the globe. We reveal that human influence explained many forms of soil contamination worldwide. Socio-economic factors were integral to explaining the occurrence of soil contaminants worldwide. We further show that increased levels of multiple soil contaminants were linked with changes in microbial traits including genes associated with environmental stress resistance, nutrient cycling, and pathogenesis. Taken together, our work demonstrates that human-driven soil contamination in nearby natural areas mirrors that in urban greenspaces globally, and highlights that soil contaminants have the potential to cause dire consequences for ecosystem sustainability and human wellbeing.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1706
Number of pages12
JournalNature Communications
Volume14
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

Open Access - Access Right Statement

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

  1. SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
    SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being
  2. SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
    SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

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