Project Description: The improvement of soil health will have a major impact on agricultural productivity. Soil-dwelling organisms within agro-ecosystems provide crucial ecosystem services for food production through contributions to nutrient recycling (detrivores such as earthworms), drought tolerance (mycorrhizal fungi), and pest mitigation (predators and parasitoids of pests). However, studies to date have suffered from a lack of longer term management data, often being derived from treatments of short duration without consideration of longer-term impacts, or utililising small spatial scales rather than undertaking a ‘whole farm’ analysis. The studentship will assess the impact of reduced and zero tillage on soil dwelling fauna of agronomic importance within arable land, and then id