Soil health to enhance ecological restoration and conservation

Ecological restoration has gained increased attention to combat the global biodiversity and habitat loss driven by human activities and climate change. To address these impacts, restoration efforts apply interventions aimed at recovering native ecosystems on degraded lands. However, they tend to centre on vegetation-based interventions, with limited attention to aboveground and belowground linkages. Soil health, including its physicochemical, biological and functional attributes, is fundamental to ecosystem resilience and sustainability, provision of services, and human well-being. This synthesis explores how a deeper understanding of soil-vegetation interactions can support restoration and conservation efforts. We discuss how restoration interventions can be applied from early to later stages of restoration, future directions and novel approaches that target aboveground and belowground processes to promote soil health and successful plant community establishment. We propose that integrating practices that explicitly consider linkages among vegetation, soil properties and biota can lead to more effective restoration outcomes and the establishment of resilient, self-sustaining ecosystems.