Building a global database of soil microbial biomass and function: a call for collaboration

Global analyses are emerging as valuable complements to local and regional scale studies in ecology and are useful for examining many of the major environmental issues that we face today. Soil ecology has significantly benefited from these developments, with recent syntheses unearthing interesting, unexpected biogeographic patterns in belowground biotic communities. However, some questions still remain unanswered, and the accuracy of these studies is inevitably limited by the extent of the data they draw upon. This is a particular problem in global ecology because most datasets used exhibit geographic bias in sample distribution. Here, we work towards addressing this problem with an open call for collaboration on a planned global analysis of soil phospholipid fatty acid and potential enzyme activity measurements. We summarize the current extent of our dataset, outline the planned analyses, and provide information for prospective collaborators who would like to contribute or learn more.